Brazilian embassy screens Golden Globe winning The Central Station

The screening was part of the Festival of Brazilian Cinema in Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD: Award-winning Brazilian film The Central Station was screened at the Brazilian embassy on Sunday, as part of the Festival of Brazilian Cinema in Pakistan.

“All movies that were picked for screening are purely Brazilian. We invited people to come see this film to popularise Spanish and Brazilian films,” Thomas Napoleao, the first secretary of the Brazilian embassy, told The Express Tribune. “It is a very big industry that not many in Pakistan seem to know of.”

The film, which has won 30 film awards including the Golden Bear of the Berlin Festival and the Golden Globe award for best foreign language film, follows the journey of a woman Dora and nine-year-old boy Josue as he searches for his lost father who he has never met.

Dora makes a living writing letters for illiterate people at the Rio de Janeiro central train station but, instead of delivering them, she either discards or tears them up. Her behaviour lands her into an awkward situation in which she ends up taking in the homeless young boy whose mother had come to Dora for writing letters to her husband. Unwilling to care for him, she sells him off to an orphanage known for murdering children and selling their organs.  But for once, her conscience gets the better of her and she steals him back from the orphanage and decides to travel with him to Bom Jesus where they believe his father might still be living.

But what could have turned into a typical “cynical person turns good” tried-and-tested formula manages to break away from the usual and transport the viewer into the more human side of the script.

Dora is callous and makes no bones about it. Often, she lashes out at the only one she can: young Josue. But the more they travel, the more she finds herself responsible for the young boy who tries his best to act independent and grown up.

The characters of Dora and Josue are in perfect harmony. Instead of outshining each other, both roles are strong and stand their ground. Josue, instead of becoming a sensitive victim of circumstances, is ever sharper around his surroundings.

All is not rainbows and roses though. When they finally manage to locate Josue’s father’s address after a long, arduous journey that leaves them broke and hungry, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead his two sons (who are Josue’s brothers whom he never knew of) are living there. The fate of the missing father is left a mystery as each brother interprets the father’s long absence as a sign of optimism or pessimism.

Although Dora begins to grow fond of the young boy, who with his innocence and candid behaviour makes her understand herself, she feels it is best that he be left behind to stay with his brothers.

Young Jouse is played by Vinicious de Oliveira who was a shoeshine boy who beat more than 1,500 children who were auditioned or interviewed for the role. The role of Dora is played by award-winning Brazilian actress Fernanda Montengero. Made through grants from the Sundance Institute, the NHK and the French Ministry of Culture, this film was shown at film festivals in 1998.