Estamira

Estamira, who suffered from diabetes, died at the age of 70 from a generalized infection, while waiting for two days in the corridors of the Miguel Couto Municipal Hospital, sadly accompanied by one of her three children and the director of this documentary who supported her during her hospitalization... The 2022 champion Samba School Grande Rio (for the first time) paid tribute to Estamira on one of its floats...

A poet and philosopher in moments of lucidity and an artist in the reveries of madness...

Estamira tells the story of a 63-year-old woman who suffers from mental disorders and has worked for more than twenty years at the Jardim Gramacho landfill, a place neglected by society, which receives more than eight thousand tons of garbage produced in Rio de Janeiro every day. With an eloquent, philosophical and poetic speech, the central character of the documentary raises intimate questions of global interest, such as the fate of the garbage produced by the inhabitants of a metropolis and the subterfuges that the human mind finds to overcome an unbearable reality to live.

In the beginning of the movie we already get impressed with the beautiful photography. The camera catches some scenes not so common on our daily routine, we start to enter Estamira's world.

First, her madness: She says some concepts that seem out of reality and belonging to someone unreasonable person who's lost in life; maybe the long time she had spent on that amount of waste turned her into someone badly ill.

Throughout the movie, her words get in contrast with impressive sceneries. Nature and the human waste create an impression of dystopia and induce deep reflections about humanity and all we have done to ourselves.

Although in a poor and dirty place with inhuman conditions, we can see compassion and fraternity. Her words, although sometimes senseless, start to make some sense (if we take her living context as a start).

She is in fact ill; she is psycho. Her hallucinations go on through mystics and hate about catholicism. Se is sure that she is blessed with superior powers. She has hard pains, "it's the remote control" she says.

The documentary, then, focus on her personal history, her daughter, her son (a religion seeker), her "lost" daughter, the abandon of her husband, the rapes she suffered, her frustration with her believes. Her psychopathy starts to seem reasonable and to touch us deeply. In her mind, ideas and memories get mixed and form new concepts.

Despite her living conditions, she is happy and satisfied. Maybe it's an illusion, but her life is colored. And the camera shows that: when she talks about herself, the black and white becomes vivid and plain.

And we start to think: she is in a so sad and depressing reality (comparing to ours), but what she says about life, future, politics, religion, believes and perspectives... though based on an ill mind, makes a lot of sense to us. It's even revealing. Maybe the world is crazy. We are in a chaos. And Estamira, who is out of the economic system, can broadcast it.

Or not. Maybe we are so deeply lost in our normality and empty standard way of living, that we believe in anyone who says that can save us.

I've seen this movie at a festival and i just hate it. I've seen lots of movies in black-white, or documentary etc. but none of them was as boring as this movie. It was not a movie actually, it was just a crazy woman talking about how much she hates the God and how to make pasta by using craps... It was like, a torture, misery. I was like "please just stop" but the movie was not just so boring but also so long. There are lots of scenes that has nothing to say... There is no point... Once i was at a "movie workshop" and there was a guy teaching writing a scenario and he told us that "a movie is about the visions, it's about what you show people and what they see. If someone talks talks talks about life etc. it's not a movie. It's a video that you shot, but not a movie." I wish, someone has told this to the director of this movie... I hate it!!!

In the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, the sixty and something years old Estamira is an insane but happy woman that has been working for more than twenty years in the city dumpster in Gramacho, collecting remains for recycling or personal use. Along the documentary, we see the madness of this woman through her philosophic principles and concepts of life and religion; but further than that, we see that she was a normal married woman abused by her husband and with three daughters and one son, all of them well-raised and normal. In accordance with her older daughter, she told that she was a religious woman that worked in a supermarket; after being raped for the second time in Campo Grande, she became delusional and insane, giving up and blaming God.

"Estamira" is an awarded and overrated documentary about the sad and depressive life of this crazy, but happy and proud dump collector. The introduction of this documentary has one of the most impressive cinematography in grainy black and white I have recently seen, following Estamira from her home to her working place in the landfill. The runtime of 121 minutes is excessively long and boring, disclosing too much insanity for my taste. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Estamira"

Estamira is a poet and she lives intermittently in a garbage dump. This film is very long and very worth its length. And while there are filmmakers and editors behind it, Estamira is the writer and principal actor in this documentary. It is one of the many shames in the random sport of distribution that this film was not widely seen in the United States or elsewhere. For those who saw Bus 174, this should have seemed a worthy cousin, for its similar approach to a story of Brazil's underclass.

There are few playwrights or screenwriters or novelists that could match her use and facility with language. Yes, she is crazy and yes Dante would be jealous and Pope's should be nervous.