Northwest Film Forum

This visually fascinating collaboration from Brazilian filmmakers Karim Ainouz and Marcelo Gomes is almost more video installation than movie. Its unseen protagonist, a geologist sent to the northeast of Brazil for research purposes, mounts a camera to the dashboard of his car, and in between geological measurements, he examines the people and landscapes he finds. His narration moves back and forth between scientific observation and personal reflection, musing in turn about the earth’s exterior and his own interior. With a collage of formats and an often first-person perspective, it is a tale of emotional crisis lived through travel and is bound to imprint new images on the mind’s eye.

“A visual record of poverty and labor that’s at once barbed and narcotic.” —The New York Times