The Girl Who Killed Her Parents, 2021, 80 minutes.
The Boy Who Killed My Parents, 2021, 87 minutes.
Both films are directed by Maurício Eça, with Ilana Casoy and Raphael Montes as screenwriters. In the cast, Carla Diaz (Suzane von Richthofen), Leonardo Bittencourt (Daniel Cravinhos), Allan Souza Lima (Cristian Cravinhos), Vera Zimmermann (Marísia von Richthofen), Leonardo Medeiros (Manfred von Richthofen), Augusto Madeira (Astrogildo Cravinhos), Debora Duboc (Nadja Cravinhos) and Kauan Ceglio (Andreas von Richthofen).
The films tell the same story, based on real events, especially those that appear in the testimonies of Suzane von Richthofen and Daniel Cravinhos in the lawsuits in which they were accused of killing Suzane's parents.
I first saw The Girl Who Killed Her Parents, which features Daniel Cravinhos' account of how it was used by Suzane during their relationship.
The Boy Who Killed My Parents, on the other hand, brings Suzane von Richthofen's version of how she was manipulated by Daniel until she got to the murder of her parents.
They accused the films of manicheans, but the judicial statements of the two accused were in this way, precisely a way to convince the Jury Court that the intellectual authorship of the crime was the other's and that he/she had been manipulated by him/her to participate in the murder.
In my opinion, for a better understanding of the whole story, it's best to watch The Boy Who Killed My Parents before The Girl Who Killed The Parents, the opposite of what I did, because it's easier to put together parts of the script that seem loose in The Girl. Perhaps, for this reason, I liked The Boy Who Killed My Parents more, as it is rounder and not as dependent on explanations as the other one. In fact, there was no need to make two films. Adding about twenty minutes more in one of them, reaching a duration of two hours, normal standard of a feature film, it was possible to show both versions of the same story.
I liked the interpretation of the two main actors, although it was not something spectacular.
The negative point, for me, is having placed the use of marijuana on the account of the articulator of the crime. In one film, it is Suzane who uses it, causing Daniel to also use it, in another, it is the opposite. I don't use marijuana, because I get sick, but to impute, even indirectly, the use of marijuana as molding the character of the killers is pushing the bar too far. It may even be that the screenwriters wanted to be faithful to the testimonies, who may have used it guided by their lawyers, since society is still conservative in relation to the topic, but as it is a work of fiction based on real events, they could have changed this addiction to another, heavier one that really significantly alters people's psychology.
Although also convicted, Cristian Cravinhos does not have his testimony portrayed in the film.
