Leonardo Ferreira

Ivan Cardoso is the inventor of the terrir, a subgenre that mixes comedy, Brazilian chanchadas and classic American horror. This film promotes a rescue of his work by mixing archival material, animations and fictional reconstructions.

A Whole Life is a love story set in Sao Paulo between two young adults in their thirties. The film portraits the concerns and aspirations of an entire generation of independent young adults, who are focused on their careers and lack affection. You could fit a lifetime between a couple's first night together and the premonition of an impending breakup.

Invented by the post-New Wave, the exercise is well-known: put a filmmaker in the frame, make him talk about his career, evoke his admirations, rummage in his methods, and add words to silences, spoken images to seen images. It’s always very instructive. As is the case here too. Chantal Akerman, passing through South America, talks about herself for an hour, and it’s fascinating. Even if her recalling of the relationship between the cinema and time makes up only a few rare minutes.

Slowly we recognize traces of a couple's history. Joana, living isolated in an apartment between books and mysteries searching for an "ideal world" and Jota living on the streets searching for a confrontation with the real and trying to give back the final word to the "other"..