Micaela Cyrino

Letter Beyond the Walls reconstructs the trajectory of HIV and AIDS with a focus on Brazil, through interviews with doctors, activists, patients and other actors, in addition to extensive archival material. From the initial panic to awareness campaigns, passing through the stigma imposed on people living with HIV, the documentary shows how society faced this epidemic in its deadliest phase over more than two decades. With this historical approach as its base, the film looks at the way HIV is viewed in today's society, revealing a picture of persistent misinformation and prejudice, which especially affects Brazil’s most historically vulnerable populations.

40 years after the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, seven artists and an activist doctor, all of them living with HIV, offer new images and perspectives to deal with serophobia in Brazil.

Province of São Paulo, 1870. An enslaved man flees through a dense forest in search of a supposed quilombo. On his heels are two "capitães-do-mato" with orders to capture him at all costs. But the forest, in its depths, harbors mysteries and ghosts capable of surrounding them in a trap.