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SISTERS

MANAS

By Marianna BRENNAND FORTES

Drama - Development 2019

Marcielle is 13 years old, the eldest daughter of an impoverished family on Marajó Island. Having suffered frequent sexual abuse at home, she will do everything in her power to protect her younger sister Carol from a fate she was unable to escape.

- Year of production
- 2019
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- BRAZIL, PORTUGAL
- Languages
- BRAZILIAN-PORTUGUESE
- Budget
- 1 - 3 M$
- Duration
- 100 mn
- Director(s)
- Marianna BRENNAND FORTES
- Writer(s)
- Antonia PELLEGRINO, Camila AUGUSTINI, Felipe SHOLL
- Producer(s)
- Carolina BENEVIDES (Inquietude), Luis GALVÃO (Fado Filmes), Mauricio ANDRADE RAMOS
- Synopsis
- MARCIELLE, 13 years old, a small and thin girl, already showing the first signs of puberty, lives with her parents, Danielle (30) and Marcílio (32), and siblings, Marcéu (4), Carol (9) and Danílio (14), in a small and very poor stilt house on the banks of the Tajapuru River, in the Island of Marajó, Pará. Her father has abused the girl since she started her period and Marcielle still doesn’t understand the brutal dimension of the abuse she suffers.
  As if it was the beginning of a new phase in her growth, her mother, Danielle, now also encourages Marcielle to contribute to the family bills. Without her father knowing, the girl is encouraged to board the ferries that cross the river to, with the excuse of selling products from the forest, be sexually explored by the passengers. The ferry and the exploration don’t seem as bad as she thought they’d be, and the girl starts making a little money and becomes interested in the outside world the men she meets show her. Marcielle knows, by what her mother tells her, that her older sister, Claudinha, married a man she met on the ferry and is doing very well in a city in the south of Brazil and wearing winter coats, and she starts to build up a desire to run away from there.
  Marcielle then meets a social worker, ARETHA (45), a combative woman who, in the past, convinced her mother to report her father for the abuse she suffered and will also encourage Marcielle to do the same. When Marcílio finds out his daughter is going to the ferries, he immediately starts rejecting the oldest daughter and courting Carol. When Marcielle sees her small sister suffering because of the abuse, she finally understands the violence of her relationship with her father and decides to report him to the police. When Marcílio is arrested, Danielle, who, in the past, already went through this situation and, from her perspective, knows it will bring more suffering, orders her daughters to drop the charges so that their father can come back home. After her mother’s decision, Marcielle doesn’t see a way out and decides to run away and take Carol far away from there.
  Both girls then steal a small boat and go alone into the imposing river, looking very small in face of it all. We don’t know where they’re going, but they’re going far away from home.