A documentary about an Argentinean-Brazilian movie director, Hector Babenco. I hadn’t seen any of his movies. I will definitely try to watch some after seeing this documentary. This movie is a work from his wife, so it’s no surprise that we would get an unique and personal touch. We get a peek of his past before working as a filmmaker, his days as filmmaker and his struggles battling with cancer.

The movie begins with a few of, what might seem to be, some random shots. Then Babenco appears explaining and teaching his wife, amorously, on how to operate the camera. Even without reading synopsis of the movie, the audience would get the sense that “oh ok, this guy definitely works at a movie industry. He knows better than whoever is behind the camera for this one.” From then on, scenes on the movies would transition between Babenco in his daily life and scenes from his past movies. All in black and white format, an adequate tone of color as it wants to show the clear (clear as black and white, nothing grey about it) journey that we all know its principal character, Babenco, is heading, death. 

As someone who’s never watched any of his movies, by seeing this movie, you could get a glance and understand a little bit on what kind of filmmaker Babenco is. The marginalized, people who often got misunderstood by the majority is one common denominator in all his works. In this movie, you would get to understand the reason why he’s always gearing towards those characters. 

The ending of the movie is beautiful and after watching this movie, one might wonder, don’t we all deserve this kind beautiful documentary done by our loved ones ? They would understand us better, they would capture and encapsulate things better than we can, they would give us a much better image because sometimes, we can be the most cruel person towards our own selves. 

In this way, fiction comes into being. It comes from inventing a feeling and developing it. And my greatest pain is in relation to the difficulty in doing this. It’s as if imagining and thinking leave much still to be done and time is short, and the feeling grows that the great work hasn’t been achieved. 

Hector Babenco