Sideral (2021) dir. Carlos Segundo

The films of rising Brazilian filmmaker Carlos Segundo often invoke the surreal in counterpoint to its representations of everyday life. The filmmaker’s black-and-white short Sideral stands out in this regard, packing a poignant domestic drama into a fiction about a historic rocket launch in Northern Brazil; in turn, universalizing the unsolvable complications of family life and making cosmic fantasies appear both down-to-earth and awesome. Segundo links Sideral with a quote by philosopher Friedrich Nietzche in which he notes finding freedom is about fitting “our desire into the desire for an event.” This longing is tangible throughout the film, in which scenes of a dissatisfied mother carrying out domestic chores are paired against television broadcasts of the local rocketship. The mother’s wish to escape the drudgeries of everyday life is laid out as Chekov’s rocket slowly grows from an object of fascination into a potential vehicle of liberation for the working-class figure. Segundo claims he has “never wanted to go to space,” that he is simply attracted to “its immensity and infiniteness.” Sideral indulges in this sense of wonder; its narrative twists amplify its mystery and offer a portal of infinite outcomes that reflect the untapped potential of human imagination. “In my works, I try to build a place that is on the edge of the impossible and the possible. In the sense of reality and how it can be reworked and enhanced in this limit of the almost impossible.” CARLOS SEGUNDO