A young dock worker on the border between Brazil and Uruguay does everything to keep on top of his family, his job and fishing.

Songs that tell stories of love, the last draught or the lack of money. There can be no doubt that the music of José Domingos de Morais, one of the great Brazilian accordion players, is folk music in the best sense. This film constitutes the three directors’ respectful bow to the artist, who died in 2013. All through his life he retained a deep bond to the culture of his home, the Sertão in the northeast of Brazil. That’s where the film starts, too. Not so much the portrait of a musician as a dreamy trip in time through an unknown Brazil whose diversity was the soil from which something as wonderful as Dominguinhos’ music could grow. The filmmakers use a variety of sources: archive material from the 1940s about the Sertão of the farm labourers and have-nots, television shows from the 1950s and 60s, interviews with musicians from various phases of his life, great concerts in the 2000s. In fact they work in a quarry of visual memories – not just their protagonist’s, but also their own and those of their country. This work of remembrance, associative and erratic, dominates the film’s tone. An image sequence edited to a melody, a rhythm to a story, the lyrics of a song to a short biographical note. It’s a bold narrative design and the music is simply enchanting.
Matthias Heeder