Cabra Marcado Para Morrer

In 1962, director Eduardo Coutinho decided to make a film about peasant leader João Pedro killed on an ambush after some rivalry between his union movement and his bosses in Brazil's Northeast. The film had to be interrupted after the Military Dictatorship in 1964, part of the material was confiscated considered of its subversive content by the government, many people involved were arrested and other things happened too. In 1982, twenty years later, the director decided to continue with the movie but this time instead of a feature film he decided to do a documentary telling the story about the figures involved with that film. "Cabra Marcado Para Morrer" (known around the world as "Twenty Years Later") shows how things changed after the repressive government take over the country and the force of a film and an idea that couldn't die.

Coutinho interviews the actors of the original film, workers and people who knew the peasant leader and João Pedro's widow Elizabeth Teixeira and their family, tracking down all of their sons that followed different directions after Elizabeth's prison after she takes over her husband's function at the syndicate. The remaining images of the film filmed in 1962 are often shown with images of the 1980's documentary showing how these people were affected by countless things after the brutal years of political repression. They're old, tired, ordinary people that passed through a lot of things but still fighting against social and political problems, making a good country. They tried but now many years later from this film we're still seeing that many things that union fought to change haven't changed around the country. This is still a country where dissemblance reigns.

Now comes my vision of watching this film. It is a relevant work if you want to know more about the hard years of Military Dictatorship in Brazil; a small story you won't find in history books; and the contrast between time and experiences are fabulous to see. The stories told by João Pedro's widow are very impressive and along with the narration of Ferreira Gullar is the most comprehensible and interesting part of the film.

In terms of opinions of what people say about this is film I found it an overrated documentary, sometimes it loses its point very easily, a film was made, interrupted, other was made to state a poignant thing about how politics can ruin a film but they keep interviewing people with some random question that goes almost nowhere; it is very tiresome, and the version I watched was extremely incomprehensible, the sound was awful during the testimonies of some of João Pedro's sons, the dialect used and the way they talked was too fast and inaudible to understand. It wasn't such a nice experience but it was a memorable one.

10 star rating for it? I don't think so! I'm still about to see a really great documentary about this dark era. It deserves praise and recognition for showing how powerful the cinema media can be, can survive through decades and years and have great things to say about one people and a nation. In the end, the film lasted while the regime haven't, it was dying when this film was started again. 7/10

This is the best documentary I'd ever seen. Show in a carnal way how the press work to a government, and how the paranoid take care of it, with barbarous consequences. An unique movie, with a dramatic self-history, that is the dramatic self history of a country and all a continent. Art in pure state.

This acclaimed documentary made by Eduardo Coutinho is filled of good intentions also well-done having the respected by the international press and so on, what was meant to be a movie about an deadly ambushed against a rural work's leader João Pedro Teixeira in April 1962 who helped founded a rural syndicate at small village called Sapé in Paraiba state in Brazilian northeast one most poorest place in our country due the extensive drought that ravages such dry place, after that a local enquiry took place finding two policemen as perpetrated of the crime and also the mastermind who was a powerful landowner.

Coutinho had a plan to recount the whole story with all originals rural workers using the João Pedro's widow Elizabeth and their children, just replace João Pedro already dead for an actor, the idea was use the same place where everything come to pass in Sapé, however another clash between both sides ends up in a slaughter, then Eduardo Coutinho moved the whole crew to Galiléia in nearby state Pernambuco, after they barely begun the shooting in April 1964 broke up the military government who overthrew the civil regime.

After that the Paraiba's Army stepped in the rural syndicate and arrested all members including the widow Elizabeth, the filmmaker Coutinho and crew slipped away left behind all shooting equipment even the original screenplay and notes, who recover later, many of syndicate members were hardly tortured by Paraiba's authorities, some have fulfilled eight years in prison, afterwards all policemen were acquitted unanimous and the mastermind got a chair in chambers of deputies after four of them had resigned, even the instigator has been the fourth standby, unbelievable.

Just in 1981 Coutinho starts all over again, nonetheless now as documentary after the amnesty law took affect in 1979 and the opening of democratic rights, he had interviewed all remainders of those era, sadly Coutinho found another scenery, the country changes a lot, the labor law already had reach in those camps, apart the struggles of the rural workers, sadly the whole family of the old widow Elizabeth had paid a high price, all the eight brothers split all around the country, even to Cuba, they stayed adrift moving all time, each one for yourself, today they weren't connected anymore, perhaps a quick appointment if so.

Thanks for reading.

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First watch: 2022 / Source: DVD / How many: 1 / Rating: 8.

A very fine and poignant documentary. Rarely does one see such brutally honest self-criticism in a film. No doubt, one of the best Brazilian documentaries.

Brazil is more than Rio and the rainforest. Sometimes I wish it wasn't, like when I watch this movie. In the early 60s, farm workers in Pernambuco organized themselves against labor exploitaition. Some people tried to make a movie about it. But when the military dictatorship came, they have all been arrested. The movie was banned, people arrested, equipment taken, and the leader of the workers was murdered. In 1985, the original movie crew went back to the place and found the people, interviewing them to find out what happened through all these horror years.