Estamira

I was very interested in seeing this film based completely on the synopsis, since I couldn't find a review ANYWHERE online. I went into it pretty cold, not knowing exactly what to expect. The beginning of the film really grabbed me - the film was grainy, black and white, and the imagery was poetic and disturbing. This is the story of Estamira... sort of... I wont go into the detail of her life and what we see of it, because you can see that in the movie and read about it in the plot summary... some of the shots in this movie were spectacular... especially in the first half, and the final sequence in the water.. but there were points where her ranting and raving became almost painful to endure.. contradictory, angry, and occasionally insightful, Estamira is a rather unique and confusing person and her story is heartbreaking, although it is difficult to empathize given her temperament. I was hoping they would go into more detail with some of the other people featured in the film - mainly her friends at the landfill, but it was mainly dedicated to her. The main this I can say is that its a good film, but if they had have cut it down to about 45 minutes, it would have been superb. I'm looking forward to seeing what the director does next.

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.

It's an obscure film, shot in 2004, only released in the movie theaters now.

It's the story of a 72-year-old schizophrenic woman who has been earning a living, in the last 20 years, in Rio's city dumpster. Like hundreds of others, she awaits the huge trucks with garbage and scavenges it in search of material to recycle, sell or keep to herself. She says that's the happiest she's ever been, because she had no luck in the world prior to that. She's seen giggling with her friends, flirting with another - most likely, just as unstable as she is -, and remarking about her role in the universe.

The cinematography - yes, the city dumpster - is amazing. The opening scene shows plastic blacks flying among vultures, and from then on, grainy shots of people, like ants, climbing the piles of garbage, the red sunset, telling a story of pollution, a black river of a putrid liquid with gas coming out of the bubbles, the dogs and the horse against the sunset, side-by-side with a burning garbage can.

The comedy relief of the movie, and also some of its most insightful moments, comes with her cussing loudly at God. When one of her grandchildren mentions we all come from God, she says "shove God up your! God rapist God thief God that never helped me or anyone else! Your mother came from my bosom, nowhere else! God rapist, incompetent, mean!!" It's so outrageous, the whole audience was laughing out loud. Her only son, very religious, fears she is possessed with a malignant spirit, so he won't visit her anymore. The other daughter, not religious, gives her all support.

The story of her life is so sad that it can weakened by placing labels. They are always avoided in the movie, and her whole life is unveiled slowly, so that we are led to believe her when she says that the city dumpster was the best thing in her life. She is proud of what she does, proud that she built her house with what she found at the dumpster, and says that everybody in the world needs Estamira.

She had a daughter while living in the dumpster. Her older son decided to give the 6yo kid for an informal adoption with a loving, middle-class family. The girl is now 21, beautiful, and she says: "I feel resentment because I was not raised by my mother. I have bad memories of the dumpster, everything is bad there, but my mother raised my two siblings, why not me? We would be hungry sometimes, but I would survive, I know I would, and we'd never be separated".

The movie started small, but word of mouth is working so much that, on a Thursday, the theater was crowded, and people applauded at the end. Despite the punches in the stomach you get while watching it, it's in fact an uplifting movie, in that you see the love inside her family, the blissful ignorance of her friends at the dumpster, the fact that she laughs at herself and wants to go on living to fulfill her "mission".

Watch it if you have the chance and realize there is happiness where you least expect 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"

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!!!