Sauders Aeternas, which premiered at the Visions du Lille international competition, is the feature debut of visual artist and director Emma Boccanfuso, and was shot over many years inside Rio de Janeiro’s Chapeu Mangueira favela.
The film centers on Soori, a formidable patriarch who presides over a busy multi-generational household. While daily life unfolds within the walls of her home, with arguments, laughter, and children growing up, outside, mass shootings and deaths continue at a steady pace.
“Saudades Aeternas”
Provided by VdR
Movies never leave the house. Home is both a refuge and a witness to the cycles of life and loss beyond its walls. The best view of the outside world is the beach of Copacabana, visible from the terrace just a few hundred meters away.
Boccanfuso’s starting point was the culture shock he experienced when he first came to the favela.
“What really shocked me was their relationship leading up to the death. There were a number of deaths and shootings that occurred during my time there,” she told Variety. She came from a confined experience of death between “hospitals and cemeteries” and was struck by the contrast between them. “I felt that the boundaries between the dead and the living had completely melted, and I was able to accept death more easily.”
That sense of tension became the core of the project. “I had to live there to understand how it is possible to live in such violence and at the same time live life 300% and with the biggest smile of anyone I have ever met.”
Originally conceived as an installation piece while studying at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, the film naturally grew into a full-length feature.
“I was actually just shooting with my phone, and I took static shots that looked like paintings that I projected on the wall,” she says. “I tried to recreate this house so that the viewer could feel the experience of violence that was happening both outside and inside the house.”
Over time, Boccanfuso moved into the house next door and became part of the family, getting used to being photographed. Her pared-down approach ultimately defines the film’s aesthetic.
Sound plays a central role in conveying what the camera doesn’t see. Boccanfuso incorporates additional recordings, such as gunshots and snippets of conversations between gang members captured on walkie-talkies, to reconstruct the violence through what was heard. These were recorded separately and integrated into the sound compilation.
She says she never expected to film the violence itself, or even the family’s reaction to the death. With mass shootings frequently being filmed and disseminated on a daily basis, often in real time through local messaging groups, she was concerned about the normalization of such images, especially among children.
This absence created a structural challenge for editing. “You want to talk about all these deaths, but we don’t have the images,” she recalls a conversation with her editor.
The solution was to build a narrative system centered around absence. An audio message announcing the death is superimposed over a static shot of an empty house, reflecting her own experience as events unfold.
“We decided to present the violence in the film as I experienced it on camera: off-screen, in the house, trapped with the characters, waiting for information on the phone,” she explains, “splicing the events verbally from window to window.”
The film makes no attempt to map each death into a clear narrative. What emerges is less a catalog of tragedy than a portrait of resilience.
“Rather than trying to make the viewer understand who’s who, we approached the deaths as a crowd gathered around Sueli and more broadly within the slums.”
For Boccanfuso, whose previous work was rooted in the contemporary art world, the film’s selection at Vision du Reel is an opportunity to reach a broader audience and shine a light on communities living in conditions shaped by systemic injustice.
She is currently considering filming a sequel set at Copacabana Beach, which will reunite the same characters, who now work as surf instructors and street vendors, and depict the legendary beach from their perspective, moving away from the postcard image.
Produced by Close Up Films and Macalube Films with co-production support from Radio Télévision Switzerland (RTS), “Saudades Eternas” will have its world premiere in Vision du Rille main competition on April 21st.
Visions du Lille will be held in Nyon until April 26th.
