Donizete Mazonas

“Nobody Leaves Alive” by André Ristum is shot in beautiful but also distancing black and white. Looking at the Venice line-up, this seems to be a trend this year among the maestros of cinema. The film is inspired by true events that took place in the last century in the “Colonia” hospital in Brazil. Whoever didn’t fit the standards of society, or their family’s perception of it, was locked away, tortured, and killed. There were altogether more than 60,000 victims. Hope dies last, and some of the inmates don’t give up the fight. We’re reminded of film classics such as “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest” or “Alcatraz”.

Small-town trickster Pedro Malasartes has to face two great enemies: Próspero, who will do anything to impede such a lazy, cowardly person like Malasartes from dating his sister, Áurea; and Death incarnated, who wants to take a vacation after two thousand years collecting lives and intends on tricking Malasartes into assuming his tedious job.