(LOS ANGELES) Gabriel Martins’ MARS ONE, Brazil’s official selection for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, opened the 14th Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival. Besides the director, the producers Thiago Macêdo Correia and Maurílio Martins, actors Carlos Francisco, Camilla Damião and Cícero Lucas, joined the gala ceremony.

MARS ONE follows the Martins family, who are optimistic dreamers, quietly leading their lives in the margins of a major Brazilian city following the disappointing inauguration of a far-right extremist president. A lower-middle-class Black family, they feel the strain of their new reality as the political dust settles. Tércia, the mother, reinterprets her world after an unexpected encounter leaves her wondering if she’s cursed.

Her husband, Wellington, puts all of his hopes into the soccer career of their son, Deivinho, who reluctantly follows his father’s ambitions despite secretly aspiring to study astrophysics and colonize Mars. Meanwhile, their older daughter, Eunice, falls in love with a free-spirited young woman and ponders whether it’s time to leave home.

Brazil / 115 min / 2022
Directed by Gabriel Martins
Cast: Rejane Faria, Carlos Francisco, Camilla Damião, Cícero Lucas, Ana Hilário, Russo APR, Dircinha Macedo, Tokinho e Juan Pablo Sorín