Private Project

The Enchanted Day of the Erês

Come to a unique party in Brazil with trans woman Suzy Santos, where for one enchanted day she invites child-spirits called Erês to join her in a sacred ritual of music and dance. Suzy is a priestess of Candomblé - an Afro-Brazilian religion which is one of the few to welcome the vulnerable "travesti" and LGBTQI+ community. It’s not easy to be black and queer in Brazil; a country with deep structural racism where more trans people are murdered than anywhere else in the world. Shunned and cast out from their homes and religious communities, many trans women end up living as street prostitutes to survive. Suzy has created her Candomblé temple as a place of refuge and acceptance for all gender identities, where she guides her community in a religious ceremony to celebrate and incorporate the Erês.

  • Coraci Ruiz
    Director
    Flowers in the Asphalt, Threshold, Strong Feathers
  • Julio Matos
    Director
    Flowers in the Asphalt, Letters from Angola
  • Luiza Fagá
    Writer
    Flowers in the Asphalt
  • Zan Barberton
    Writer
  • Coraci Ruiz
    Writer
  • Julio Matos
    Writer
  • Scott Radnor
    Producer
  • Hidalgo Romero
    Producer
  • Zan Barberton
    Producer
  • Julio Matos
    Producer
  • Coraci Ruiz
    Producer
  • Suzy Santos
    Key Cast
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    O dia encantado dos erês
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Documentary, Experimental
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    March 15, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    20,000 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    Brazil
  • Language:
    English, Portuguese
  • Shooting Format:
    4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Coraci Ruiz, Julio Matos

Coraci & Julio - Directors
(biofilmography of the two directors in a single piece of writing)
Julio and Coraci co-founded the documentary production company Cisco Lab in 2003, to work with themes related to culture, environment, human rights and politics.
They have directed and produced several films and television series. The duo's first feature film, “Letters to Angola” (2012), took part in several festivals and won awards in Brazil, Angola, Portugal and Belgium; “Threshold” (2020), directed by Coraci and produced by Julio, was shown in over eighty festivals in various countries and received twenty-two awards in Brazil and abroad; “Blooming on the asphalt” (2022), directed by both, was screened at festivals in seventeen countries and received thirteen awards in Brazil and abroad.
They are currently working on the feature film "Iridescent", which received production support from the Canadian AlterCiné Foundation; and two short films, "Utopia Muda” (Changing Utopia) (by Julio Matos) and "Fight like a mother" (by Coraci Ruiz), both funded by the São Paulo state cultural fund, ProAc 2021/2022.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

We are the parents of a trans person; a non-binary youth. His transition process, which began in 2016, was a key challenge in our lives, and in order to better understand what was going on with him and in the trans community more broadly, we ended up bringing the issue into our professional lives.

We made two feature films: an autobiographical documentary that narrates our son's transition in the first person, from the maternal perspective, and a documentary about a group of young trans friends, including our son, who create networks of affection and solidarity to survive the dark Bolsonaro years in Brazil.

We met Suzy, the protagonist of this short film, during the making and showing of these films. She is an important leader of the LGBTQIA+ community in our city, and an extremely charismatic person. We started to develop a feature film about her, and during the research we discovered a new facet of her personality: she is also a Mãe de Santo, that is, a Candomblé priestess. We had already filmed this religious manifestation of Afro-Brazilian culture several times for other projects, always with great admiration for the beauty of mythological figures and rituals, always performed with lots of food, music and dancing. When we learned that Suzy organizes a party every year in honor of the Erês, Candomblé children's entities, we decided to make this short film.

The film's producers joined the creative process and brought the proposal to mix documentary scenes with animations, to represent the mythological universe in dialogue with the real characters. Making this film was a very rich experience, which is part of a long-term commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community in our city.