This is another proof, that sometimes You just can't squeeze artwork into a certain genre: at least half of the footage of "Sonhos de Peixe" ("Dreaming of Fish") is pure documentary, filmed in most artistic and poetic way. There are NO professional actors (accept may be one), - all people in it are real fishermen with their families, living on the east shore of Brazil, struggling for their daily existence, fishing in the ocean, while their wives and children wait for them ashore for days, in constant fear, - because often they come back empty handed (due to massive industrial fishing) or don't come back at all
These people know the very essence of living, it's true values, friendship, love, helping each other. They live very simple lives, with little luxury of small TV set in little living room, where whole village gets together every night for their ritual of watching melodrama series
All that above described picture is a daily background for young Jusce and Ana, - the girl, for who's love and attention Jusce is prepared to go very far
Russian native film director Kirill Mikhanovsky makes his first feature movie, that is "more Brazilian", than any other film made in Brazil. He enters this fragile life in Brazilian village as careful observer, painter that doesn't let a single important detail to escape his cinematic vision, and eventually makes it possible for us to see
Just like Czechoslovakian Milosh Forman once pictured American history in his "RAGTIME", British Sam Mendes in "American Beauty" or German Douglas Sirk in "Imitation of Life" – those are very essential and perhaps most sincere looks at American society, made by outsiders. I consider this as real phenomenon.
"Sonhos de Peixe" is a MUST see picture for those film lovers, who expect a little more from cinema, than just an entertainment in it's traditional sense
