Ten years ago, Heloisa received a gift: a collection of super-8 films with images of enormous cataracts that once comprised the Seven Falls (Sete Quedas), a natural paradise destroyed by the construction of Itaipu, the world’s largest hydroelectric plant, in the late 1970s. The construction of the plant, at the height of the Brazilian military regime, awakens memories of a past immersed in a political authoritarianism.

Building Bridges is a film that pursues a possible relationship between Heloisa, the filmmaker, and her father, Alvaro, an engineer who had his moment of glory during the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship. Projections and maps become the first bridges to connect with the past. However, it is the inescapable present that really strikes Alvaro and Heloisa as they position themselves on opposite sides of the troubling political situation of Brazil.

Over their encounters hovers an unspoken question, “How much does History, seemingly uncontrollable, bear upon and modify one´s individual path?

Dir. Heloisa Azevedo Passos - 73min - 2017 - Brazil - Press 'CC' in player to turn on English subtitles

"exposes the political and economic structures of contemporary Brazil" - IDFA