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Film Archive

Hopefuls

Forum of Independents - Competition 2015 / Aspirantes / Brazil 2015

This debut by a talented Brazilian filmmaker offers a sensitive rendering and sincere initiation study of a lonely hero (still almost a boy with the nickname Junior) whose dream of becoming the star of an elite football team is jeopardized under the weight of circumstances.

Hopefuls Hopefuls

Synopsis

Junior, as he’s known, since he’s essentially still a child, seems to be having a tough time getting on in life. He shares cheap lodgings with another fellow and earns money doing strenuous night shifts at a warehouse. It’s no surprise that he lives for football and desperately hangs onto the dream of perhaps every Brazilian kid – to become a famous player. Although he trains hard with his amateur team, he’s not one of the best. He won’t admit to the mounting jealousy he feels as he watches his talented friend doing extremely well on the pitch. What’s more, his prospects don’t look so rosy now that his young girlfriend Carine is pregnant, and he also has to deal with her dominant mother poking her nose in.… The debuting director betrays something of Antonioni’s style – he avoids plotlines, basing his incisive study of his muddled hero on suggestion and purely peripheral observation. He works with long, flat shots, yet perceptive viewers will gradually see the subtle and complex meanings beyond what is visible on screen.

Zdena Škapová

About the film

75 min / Color, DCP
World premiere

Director Ives Rosenfeld / Screenplay Ives Rosenfeld, Pedro Freire / Dir. of Photography Pedro Faerstein / Music Lucas Vasconcellos / Editor Karen Akerman / Art Director Ana Paula Cardoso / Producer Tatiana Leite, Luiz Alberto Gentile / Production Bubbles Project, Crisis Produtivas / Cast Ariclenes Barroso, Sérgio Malheiros, Julia Bernat, Karien Teles, Julio Adrião, Gutti Fraga / Sales FiGa Films

About the director

Ives Rosenfeld

Ives Rosenfeld studied film at Universidade Federal Fluminese in the state of Rio de Janeiro. For over ten years he worked as a sound recordist and mixer on numerous films, most recently on This Love That Consumes Us (Esse amor que nos consome, 2012) and Dores de amores (2013). He began to make a name for himself as a writer and director with the short film The Day I Did Not Kill Bertrand (O dia em que não matei Bertrand, 2008). At the 68th Locarno IFF, his feature debut Hopefuls (Aspirantes) won the Carte Blanche Award, which includes financial support for the completion of a project from a specified region.

Contacts

FiGa Films
125 Florida Avenue, 33133, Coral Gables
United States of America
E-mail: [email protected]

Guests

Ives Rosenfeld

Sandro Fiorin
Distributor, Producer, Sales Agent

Tatiana Leite
Producer

Ariclenes Barroso
Actor

Other partners
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