Your Turn
Regular price
$495.00
"This dizzying political doc offers a participatory glimpse at the student movements that rippled throughout Brazil during the past decade." - Point of View Magazine
'Your Turn breaks with conventional narrative structures to show how the young protagonists live in an rousing manner of solidarity, and self-confidently articulate their goals - while staying one step ahead of the adults. The film gives inter-generational hope and inspiration to raise our voices and stand up for our fundamental rights.' - Amnesty International Award Jury
Reflecting the evolution of Brazil's political crisis in recent years, this essential exposé of radical student activism offers a street-level view of the ramifications of austerity following the Great Recession that helped set the stage for a right-wing political takeover.
As Brazil's economic and political crisis began to deepen in 2013, controversial hikes in public transportation fares incited a popular rebellion, with significant participation by students. Protests quickly grew so large that 9 percent of the adult population of Brazil had taken to the streets, ultimately forcing most state and local governments to reverse the fare hikes. But stresses continued to mount over other austerity measures like public school closings, teacher layoffs, and overcrowded classrooms. And in 2015, upon the state of São Paulo's announcement that 94 public schools were slated for closure, affecting 300,000 students, Paulistas were quick to reaction. Organizing with social-media, students took to the streets in demand of quality education for all, eventually occupying hundreds of public schools in an unprecedented act of self-empowerment.
Your Turn captures a collective voice of the student activists leading this movement. The perspectives of Marcela Jesus, Nayara Souza, and Lucas ‘Koka’ Penteado represent central points of the fight and illuminate its intersectionality. The public school students are disproportionately poor, black or mixed race, and the austerity measures have exposed the nerves of racial and class divisions. Acutely attuned to the racial overtones of the society and rising right wing, Koka connects the students fight to the struggle against the Afro-Brazilian concept of "banzo", a profound, even suicidal, sadness or depression of enslaved people. During Marcela's process of radicalization, she explains how she had to decolonize her own mind and begin to love her own African facial features. The sexism underlying the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's first female president (in what she referred to as the first stage of a coup), is not lost on Marcela or Nayara, who have successfully challenged sexism in the students' organic, horizontal organizations. The two young women of color, veritable leaders of their communities, represent a very different Brazil from that of the likes of Michael Temer or Jair Bolsonaro, who upon his election in 2018 promised to classify movements that invade rural or urban property as terrorist groups.
93 minutes - Portuguese with English subtitles.
Directed by: Eliza Capai
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