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Development - BRAZILIAN-PORTUGUESE - Drama, Second film, Road movie - 100 minutes

Log Line

The Monster of the Chainsaw made national notoriety when he committed multiple manslaughter. He gets out of jail to become the star on a film that travels through the Amazon in order to take him to his past and a newfound love.

Previous markets

  • Cannes 2016 (Debut)
Full history

Year of production : 2016

Director(s) : Ricardo TARGINO
Writer(s) : Ricardo TARGINO, Breno LOPES
Cast : Luiz Carlos VASCONCELOS, Maeve JINKINGS

Producer(s) : Ailton FRANCO JR. (Franco Filmes)

Synopsis

Juraci, a simple man of the people from the Amazonic jungle, in his youth, became a national celebrity when he committed a crime in a farmhouse in Marabá, southern Pará. He slaughtered a whole family using a chainsaw, the tool he and other workers used to take down trees in those same lands. The crime made him known as the “monster of the chainsaw”. And there was something a bit off in that morbid media frenzy: women, terrorized by the crime as they were, couldn’t help being fascinated by the beauty of that man, and the pictures of the monster’s face multiplied everywhere, like the pictures of pop-stars. Following the crime, the “monster” tried to flee and was caught in Manaos, where he did time in the local penitentiary and made used his notoriety to win the respect of his fellow inmates. He told, in dozens of cassette tapes, his story of blood and taint, right there in his prison. He remade his memories and, with them, made brute poetry.
The day comes, nevertheless, when Juraci must leave prison and go back to live a normal life. To his amazement, there’s someone waiting for him at the gates of prison. The foreigner, that Juraci hardly recognizes in the beginning, is Vicenzo, a documentarist who had recorded a series of interviews with him for several tabloids at that time. At the time, the journalist promised him that he would be back when they returned him his freedom, so they could make a film together, about the monster.
With Vicenzo, there’s a film crew and a proposal: to take Juraci back to Marabá, where everything happened, where the “monster” would face the facts of his past and where he would also be able to find Shirliany, the daughter the “monster” had mentioned in one of his interviews.
With no better options, Juraci allows them to take him to the docks of Manaos, where he embarks towards Belém and becomes the main character of a documentary which intends to take him to his own murderous mind with the pretext of helping him meet the daughter he never lived with and barely knows.
On this boat, filled with humble Amazonian people, also travels the Cabocla, a woman of attractive curves who carries a baby in her arms. The young woman captures the attention of the travelers in a suggestive way, Juraci and Vicenzo between them. Fascinated by the technicians and film equipment, she first seduces Vicenzo, but when she finds out that Juraci is the main character of the film and therefore the “movie star”, she starts paying attention to the man and they both get involved in a game of seduction.
Along the way, on the waters between Manaos and Belem, both great Amazonian cities, through this close relationship between Juraci and the Cabocla, aspects of their lives and their stories are revealed, bringing meaning to the horrifying face of the monster and making him more human in the harsh and wild nature of life itself.
A work of fiction set in the great Brazilian rainforest, telling a story of discovery, love and adventure.

Production

Country(ies) : BRAZIL

Financing plan : The project has been approved by Ancine, allowing it to raise funds from sponsoring companies, according to the permitted amounts stated by each article of the Law. The Law of Audiovisual has become the most important funding mechanism in Brazil. Through it, sponsors enjoy the benefit of tax exemption for the amounts they contribute to the projects.
Now it's looking for international coproduction and sales agent. This project participate in the "Films from Rio", a program organized by Sicav/RJ, in partnership with Marché du Film/Producers Network, Festival do Rio, Firjan.

Start of shooting : January 2017


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