Search Film, Company, People...

MY SWEET ORANGE TREE

MEU PÉ DE LARANJA LIMA

By Marcos BERNSTEIN

IMOVISION - as DISTR

Drama - Completed 2012

When Zezé grows up, he wants to be «a poet with a bow tie».
For now, he’s just and intelligent 7-year-old who survives the violent life inside a blue-collar family with the help of an orange tree.

- Year of production
- 2012
- Genres
- Drama, Family
- Countries
- BRAZIL
- Languages
- PORTUGUESE
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Marcos BERNSTEIN
- Writer(s)
- Marcos BERNSTEIN, Melanie DIMANTAS, José Mauro De VASCONCELOS
- Cast
- João Gulherme DE AVILA, José DE ABREU, Eduardo DASKAR, Fernanda VIANNA, Júlia DE VICTA, Khatia CALIL
- Producer(s)
- Kátia MACHADO (PÁSSARO FILMS)
- Synopsis
- Zezé Vasconcelos is the 7-year-old son of factory workers and fourth in a family of five children. Their family is simple and poorly educated, but Zezé is different: he’s sensitive, precocious, and is a talented young storyteller. And he’s trouble! Nothing gives him more pleasure than transforming his neighbourhood into a setting for his mischief. Although his sister Glória knows he has a good soul, Zezé has no allies and is mercilessly subjected to beatings. Things worsen when his dad loses his job. The family stops talking, his mum is exhausted from her extra shifts and food becomes scarce. His frustrated dad spanks him more and more. Zezé’s only way out is to get into even more trouble! Zezé uses his huge imagination as a defence against all this violence. He chats with a bird that lives inside his chest and takes his little brother on walks through a pretend zoo in their backyard. But he finds his dearest source of refuge in a simple yet beautiful imaginary construction: a talking Sweet Orange Tree, a small sapling he calls «Minguinho» («Buddy»). With Minguinho, Zezé celebrates the good, suffers through the bad and shares the secrets behind his trickery. Zezé targets the frightening neighbourhood “foreigner”, Manuel Valadares, for his most elaborate schemes, and is fittingly punished when the old man catches him on his vintage car. But their relationship takes an unexpected turn: In a stroke of compassion, Valadares reaches out to the boy and a beautiful friendship develops between them. Valadares gives Zezé the attention and understanding he eagerly seeks, and teaches Zezé to commit his stories to paper. However their friendship is brutally interrupted when Valadares dies in an accident. Zezé is left incredulous, abandoned and depressed. He falls ill for weeks. Decisive weeks for the Vasconcelos family: While Zezé’s world falls apart, his father finds a job and plans their move to a bigger house. But it is too late for Zezé to hope that happiness is still possible with his family. He has changed. In the company of his Sweet Orange Tree, Zezé takes out his pen and paper. A writer is about to be born.