Hailed as a find by many critics who picked it up in Toronto, where it premiered in the catwalk section, “Charcoal” adds Markowicz’s name forcefully to the name of an exciting new generation of women filmmakers in Brazil.
It follows an extended family in the smoky Brazilian countryside, surrounded by several coal mines. When life gets monotonous, mother Irene makes a ridiculous deal with a local nurse. Ignoring family responsibilities, she cruelly agrees to take her sick father out of his misery to house the fugitive, and to earn a large sum of money.
Boasting grim humour, the film is a grim depiction of humans who have nothing left to lose, coming to terms with the world around them that delves deeper into apathy and brutality. The project bleakly depicts a protagonist who is no longer able to defeat the regimes that oppress him, so they thought they should join them instead.
“We live in a very violent world, immune to its silly moments. In Brazil, we have a president who says he’d rather have a dead son than a gay son. They say people should be armed to defend themselves, to bring peace. All these contradictions that Living it and living it in the present, it was something I wanted to portray in film,” said Brazilian writer and director Karolina Markovic, who is now working on her next film, Toole.
With a turbulent fist, Eren and her sharp-tongued son Jane slowly humbled the stubborn criminal, now at the hands of a curious rural family who proved they would do anything to stay afloat. As the film unfolds, it allows the characters to settle into themselves, completely surrounded by the rush of keeping their dark secret.
“The idea was to undermine the kind of power we always see in the hands of the same people, especially in the hands of men,” Markovic said.
“It’s a very patriarchal world, especially in the countryside. The man is the head of the family. It turns out that within this family, it’s clear that she’s the one who makes the money, who decides everything. I think that’s a reflection that isn’t seen very often,” she adds.
Veteran actors Cesar Bourdon (“Axiomas”) and especially Maeve Jenkins (“Neon Bull”) live up to the acclaimed performance of new homegrown talent of screen sucking Jan de Almeida Costa, playing Irene’s fully mature son Jane.
“I love working with a mix of talented and experienced actors like Maeve and Cesar Bourdon and other professional actors we have on film, and people who are not well-known actors,” Markovic said.
“Gene was a city person. He is the son of a couple who work in a coal factory. I never gave him the script, I would tell him his lines, sometimes before and sometimes now, because I like to improvise myself.” “In some scenes I wouldn’t give him anything and he would do it himself, like the scene where he’s washing the dishes. I’d tell him, ‘Be disobedient to your mother, and never do what you want, you should be like that naughty boy now,'” and then he created the scene with Mev. It’s a gift.”
Markowicz has also drawn inspiration from the city she chose as the film’s location, closely tracing the film through its dusty landscapes. Residents are allowed to live, without retouching, raw in their humanity. The women don’t appear on screen for thrills, but they testify to the same absurd and hopeless world that seems to be rooted around them, extra pawns in a script that rewrites mythical accounts of poverty, grief, loss, power and greed, desperately pleading for deeper dialogue.
“I did the whole script in the city. It’s a city with a lot of small coal mills, and it’s kind of a very predatory job. I was going to go to church and start drawing there because I felt it would be a little better, a lot smoother for me to do the movie if I was in that atmosphere before photography,” Markowicz notes.
She continued, “When I write the movie, I really think about how I will direct. When I direct, I also write because I change a lot of lines. I am a person who changes everything until the last minute.”
The project was produced by Zeta Carvalhosa of Brazilian Superfilmes, Karen Castanho at São Paulo-based Biônica Filmes, and Alejandro Israel at Argentinian Ajimolido Films, and the project produced international distribution by Urban Sales. The “Coal” clip from Toronto to San Sebastian, where it was shown in the Horizontes Latinos section.
coal
Courtesy of DoP Pepe Mendez
A labor of love was quickly filmed with her next movie, “Toll,” Markowicz commented on the highly rewarding chore of creating an independent cinema.
“When we were at our premiere in Toronto, and then in San Sebastian, we were with the crew members and the cast talking about how hard it was to get there, to finish the movie,” she stated.
“We’ve been doing this for six years, such a long time. The first draft I wrote of the script, it was from 2017. Then it changes and works a lot, struggles to get the money, a lot of plot twists in the middle, it’s complicated. At the time Presently, we have a government in Brazil that is totally against the filmmakers because we are so critical.”
Markowicz is currently editing the song “Toll,” and asserts that it “has a sense of humor and a grim tone of voice.”
The upcoming film is eyeing an early release in 2023 and will see the return of Kauan Alvarenga, who starred in her Cannes Queer Palm award-winning short The Orphan, alongside talents Charcoal Maeve Jinkings and Aline Marta Maia.
“Charcoal” will now screen in the United States at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 6 and bend in Brazil at Festival do Rio on October 12.
Carolina Markovic
Courtesy of Renata Terebins
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