Private Project

The Dead Parede

The Dead Parede tells the story of Catarina, a woman who lived her early childhood in a small logging village, on the banks of the Santa Bárbara River, but after the early death of her mother drowned in the saint`s waters, she was sent by her father to live and study in Europe, from where she never returned. Until the day she received a letter saying that her old man was very ill, which makes Catarina returns to her hometown after many years.

Turns out she arrives in this small village, and finds all the people closed in their homes, with the streets completely empty, in a kind of quarantine, because they believe that every year, for the river to fill and the wood to flow, Santa Bárbara takes a drowned soul into her waters in exchange for rain. That's why everyone locks themselves in their house the week before the Dead Parede, afraid of being their soul washed away by the river.

It is in this ghost village that Catarina arrives to find out about her mother's death and her family's history, and it is here that she will come across an agrarian and political conflict between her descendants who arrived from Europe a few decades ago, to “colonize” the place, and the Brazilian people who lived here before. Thus, she soon realizes that her return, the return of this only land heiress, rekindles the revenge flame of many.

However, Catarina will soon understand that this layer is still quite superficial, because she will discover, through an old matriarch from the place, that she is involved in this morbid prophecy more than she could imagine. According to the elderly woman, Catherine carries a supposed ancestral connection with the lineage of Saint Barbara, who in the Bible was beheaded by her own father, and now, she would have to fulfill the saint's sacred revenge, killing her father by drowning him in the river, the only way to end the prophecy and the deaths of the procession.

So, just when we thought we had understood the story, this fantastic plot appears in front of us like a deep river, where we will have to dive to find a way out.

  • Jandir Dario Aldana
    Writer
    Screenwriter and Director
  • Enseada Filmes
    Production Company
    Production Company
  • Olhar Distribuidora
    National Distribution
    Distribution Company
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    O Cortejo dos Mortos
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay, Treatment
  • Number of Pages:
    81
  • Country of Origin:
    Brazil
  • Language:
    Portuguese
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 27 Mostra de Tiradentes
    Tiradentes, Brasil
    October 1, 2024
    One of the six projects for all arround the country, selected to ProjetoLab Cinemundi
Writer Biography - Jandir Dario Aldana

Dario Aldana is a screenwriter, producer and film director from Brazil, and his shorts and feature films have already appeared at important cinema festivals in Brazil and around the world, such as the Grande Festival do Rio, Mostra de Cinema de Tiradentes, CineBH, Festival Internacional de Curtas de São Paulo, the Brasília Cinema Festival, Infinito Film Festival, the Huesca International Film Festival where it competed for the Oscar shortlist, and the Brazilian Film Festival, where it won the best filme award in the feature film competition.

Add Writer Biography
Writer Statement

For me, this film was born from the desire to build an allegory about the tragedy/genocide that was the arrival of white European people in Brazil, especially this last wave of the 19th century, from which I am a direct descendant.

But there is also an even deeper layer, which is the desire to build, through cinema, the invisible presence of death in the figure of the river. Because for those who don't know, I was diagnosed at the age of 3 as PWD, for carry a rare and incurable disease, which basically kills all my immunity and the function of vital organs in my body such as the kidney, making me need constant hemodialysis and transplants. So I think that this film was born from the desire to talk about this invisible presence of death that haunts my life, but also the lives of my characters, threatening their existence, but at the same time, shaping who they are.

I think this is where the great strength of this film lives: it is in this dialogue with horror and fantastic realism where everything becomes more complex and where the plot gains magical nuances. But at the same time, this is also where the film's greatest challenge lies: which is how to find, through cinema, the time and climate of this small universe, this little Macondo of ours, and at the same time, how to give shape to this invisible presence that hovers over our characters, and builds, without showing, a feeling of violence that overflows the plot and reaches the horror, making us doubt reality itself.