Reborn Babies Don’t Cry

Directed by Chico Barney, Rodolfo Mieskalo

In the depths of the tropical metropolis, where nature contends with concrete and silence is ceaselessly broken by invisible propellers and honking horns, a ritual unfolds. It is not a religious ceremony, nor a convention of medical science. It is something more profound: it is a human attempt to domesticate absence. These beings, simulacra of life, are tended to with more care than many real souls have ever received. The gathering begins without spectacle, like a silent dance between the real and the imagined. These women — mothers, artists, devotees, pilgrims — are not pretending. They believe. At the heart of Ibirapuera Park, where Oscar Niemeyer once imagined futuristic curves for a nation under construction, vinyl bodies now lie, untouched by time. In this encounter, contemporary Brazil brushes against the edge of post-reality.