Bacurau is the new film from Brazilian filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, and it has a pulp thriller premise with a radical heart: a small rural community becomes the target of a mysterious, heavily armed group of foreign white tourists. But the Bacurau residents don’t give up, and the result is what Ela Bittencourt calls, in our March-April issue, “a blistering portrait of resistance.” You might know the filmmakers from their prior work on Neighboring Sounds and Aquarius. For their latest, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with Bittencourt on her recent visit to New York and discussed the film’s resonance with Brazilian history and the filmmakers’ consistently thoughtful and dazzling technique. You can also read Bittencourt’s interview with Mendonca Filho and Dornelles in the same issue, and our special interview podcast from the New York Film Festival.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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