Estamira

Estamira is 63 and suffers from schizophrenia. For 20 years, she has survived by rummaging around in the Jardim Gramacho garbage dump near Rio de Janeiro. In this moving documentary, Marcos Prado followed her from 2000, the year that she started treatment in a psychiatric clinic. Alongside periods when she seems lost in delusions, obsessions and associative sentences, she also has peaceful periods of clarity. It is then that we learn more about her past. She has children and grandchildren, but tragic and traumatic events in her past cannot be separated from the origins of her illness. Her children are also unable to prevent her from returning repeatedly to the garbage dump. There, she seems a lot more satisfied, among the other dropouts in the apocalyptic third-world decor – photographed in ominous black & white by cameraman Leandro Lima – than with her children, with whom she quarrels about religion. In her psychotic delusions, Estamira has very fascinating ideas about the state of the world and the evil role played by God; thoughts that her religious children are not able to share. These inimitable psychotic images form a fascinating mirror of an apocalyptic reality. Estamira, produced by the people behind the documentary Oñibus 174 (screened at the festival in 2003) was made possible in part by the Jan Vrijman Fund of the IDFA. (GT)