Cinema of the World

IMDB

Presentation
The Year my Parents Went on Vacation is the story about Mauro (Michel Joelsas), a young middle-class boy from Minas Gerais as well as ardent soccer fan who loves to play button-soccer, born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother who one day sees his whole world turned upside-down. His parents leave on vacation without giving him any feasible explanation and without taking him along. Instead, he is handed over to his grandfather, who lives in the Bom Retiro district of São Paulo. But, by some coincidence of fate, Mauro finds himself alone in a completely new world.

According to the director, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation deals with a new reality as experienced by a preadolescent boy who is suddenly forced to use his own wits to surmount the obstacles life places in his path and, more than this, to get used to living in a Jewish community, in a setting such as Brazil, in which soccer is a strong cultural component. “It is a film about exile. On the various modes of exile, on how Mauro learns that life is transitory and how he learns to get along with others and survive in this world of ours”, as put by the director, who had the initial idea years ago when living in London and working with Ragdoll Productions which produces infantile programs, such as Teletubbies. “Besides this, despite the movie not being about soccer, and one in which the sport is used as a backdrop, I wanted to talk about the myth which the all star team from the 1970 World Cup has turned into. To give you an idea, every English cab driver older than 50 remembers the Brazilian all star line-up by heart for the World Cup of that year. I also wanted to help and do away with some common prejudices, stereotypes and false ideas that foreigners in general have about Brazil. All this came together and inspired me to try tell a story in which I could touch on these subjects”, explains the director, who has broad experience in working with young actors and has been producing highly acclaimed films, both for their technical and artistic quality as for their content.

After various treatments, the screenplay started to be filmed in 2005, when Hamburger and his crew spent eight weeks shooting the first “adult movie” of the director, who is known in Brazil and abroad for his projects such as Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum, for TV Cultura and cinema, and the series Filhos do Carnaval, produced by HBO.

For the director, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is a movie about different generations and team work. “The film tells a lot about the times in which I, Cláudio (Galperin, screenwriter), Bráulio (Mantovani, screenwriter) Anna (Muylaert, screenwriter), Cássio (Amarante, art director), Adriano Goldman (director of photography) and various others lived as children. Not differently than Mauro, we also had a fragmented perspective of reality. This film tells our story in a certain way. And without my crew, the best I could ever hope for, nothing of this would have been possible, in both the artistic and technical quality, as well as the content which was so efficiently portrayed”, says Hamburger who, like the boy who narrates his story, also saw his parents being arrested during the military dictatorship, has a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, and was a goalie for many years when younger.

Produced by Gullane Filmes, Caos Produções and Miravista and co-produced by Globo Filmes, the feature film’s budget stands at USD 3 million (three million dollars) and was distributed in Brazil by Buena Vista International. Buena Vista has also the rights for Latin America.


Plot Synopsis
In 1970 Brazil and the world seemed to have been turned upside-down, but the biggest worry in young 12 year-old Mauro’s mind had little or nothing to do with the proliferation of military dictatorships in South America or with the war in Vietnam. His biggest dream was to see Brazil become three-time winner of the World Cup.

Mauro is at a stage in life when one moves from infancy into adolescence. It is at this point in life in which he is forced to live without his parents, when they, as left-wing militants, are forced underground and leave him with his grandfather. But something unexpected has happened to his grandfather. The young boy is left alone without being able to inform his parents. It is Shlomo who winds up taking care of him, his grandfather’s next door neighbor, an old solitary Jewish man and employee of the local synagogue. This unexpected cohabitation results, for both of them, in a plunge into unknown worlds from which they emerge, each in their own manner, more mature than before.

While he waits for a call from his parents, Mauro learns to face a very often harsh and painful reality, but which has its moments of happiness and discovery. He finds himself alone and repeats, after a manner, the saga of his grandparents – Jewish immigrants – surviving in a new world. From this point on Mauro is introduced to not only Shlomo, the superintendent of the synagogue with whom he is forced to live, but to irreverent Hanna, a little bit his senior, with her enormous talent for making bets and business deals; young Irene, who sparks the imagination of all the kids from the block; the Rabbi, a fanatic Corinthian (soccer team) fan; Ítalo, the son of an Italian involved in student demonstrations; Edgar, the mulatto goalie of the local soccer team, among others. With his new friends, Mauro shares, among many other things, his passion for soccer, his first sexual discoveries and his desire to regain the happiness suffocated by the dictatorship.

In a delicate and very often amusing manner Mauro’s adventure is fused into his ancestor’s saga, creating a poetic mirror which reflects situations of prosecution, exile and adaptation. In this portrait of Mauro’s trajectory and his family history – his parent’s and his grandfather’s -, the screenplay mixes in an original manner diverse themes which make up the backdrop of the film. In this context, on one hand, there is a large presence of foreign immigrants in São Paulo, which gives it its ethnic and cultural variety, represented by a rich and nostalgic setting of the Bom Retiro district in the 70’s where immigrants with different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds, such as Italians, Greeks, blacks and mainly Jews lived. On the other hand, the film salvages the best scenes of the most important plays in the 1970 World Cup, accompanied by all the emotion that the best all star team of all times provided Brazilians with when they won the World Cup for the third time. And, to complete this complex scenario, there is still the oppression and violence of one of the most intense moments in the military regime.

Emotion, humor and sensitivity in the trajectory of a young boy who undergoes his rite of passage surrounded by the magic of soccer, discovering the value of friendship, solidarity, sex and the biggest lesson of all: You can’t control each and every move in life like a solitary game of button soccer.


Review from Variety
Sensitive, delicate and involving, "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" is a silky-smooth dramedy about a boy thrust into the alien environment of a Jewish community when his politicized parents are forced to flee the country. The opposite of jagged, cutting-edge Brazilian cinema, this second feature by Cao Hamburger revolves around the 1970 soccer championship and a Jewish setting that recalls Daniel Burman's "Lost Embrace," the Argentine sleeper that took home a Berlin Silver Bear in 2004. Box office-friendly, intelligent pic is a gentle, balanced crowd-pleaser that could potentially do very well with urban auds.

Hamburger's first film, "Castelo Ra-Tim-Bum, the Movie" was a spinoff of his TV children's programs. Here he makes a quiet shift toward the adult theme of an innocent caught up in a ferociously repressive dictatorship without being aware of what's happening.

For Mauro (Michel Joelsas), 1970 is the year Brazil wins the World Cup and, incidentally, the year his young parents (Simone Spaladore and Eduardo Moreira) tensely drop him off at grandpa's house on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Unbeknownst to the fleeing pair, the elderly man (Paulo Autran) has just had a heart attack hours before Mauro knocks on his door, setting in motion the film's first act of "Home Alone"-type misunderstandings.

Whisked to the funeral by Yiddish-speaking strangers, Mauro is reluctantly taken under the wing of his grandfather's next-door neighbor, Shlomo (Germano Haiut). Though nonplussed to find Mauro isn't circumcised (his mother is a Gentile), the community amiably adopts the boy while Shlomo courageously tries to find out why his parents are not calling.

The humorous central part of the screenplay is bereft of surprises, as Mauro is befriended by tomboyish, street-smart Hanna (a finely cast Daniela Piepszyk), who sells the local kids peeks at ladies trying on clothes in her mother's dressing room. Mauro develops a crush on pretty Irene (Liliana Castro), who waits tables in the local bar where everyone gathers to watch Pele and Tostao fight their way to victory during the World Cup championship.

In the tragic but understated ending, the theme of memory as something slightly unreal comes to the fore. Spare offscreen narration by an older Mauro looks back on this momentous period of his life, where real emotions turn hazy in comparison to the indelible black-and-white images of the World Cup and the streets littered with confetti. Family tragedies overlap with the collective frenzy of sports matches, while the horrors of the dictatorship pass practically unnoticed.

Hamburger feels no need (nor is there any) to underline the obvious. He has a magician's ability to keep the story light and believable, aided by a top-flight cast. In the central role, wide-eyed Joelsas adapts to his new habitat first blithely, then with growing longing for his missing parents. Playing Lucy to his Charlie Brown, Piepszyk lights up every scene she's in.

On the adult side, Haiut is the soul of dignity and resignation as the emotionally blocked but upright Shlomo who struggles to help the little stranger whom, the rabbi tells him, has been left on his doorstep by God.

Film's pleasing look comes courtesy of cinematographer Adriano Goldman's tenuous lighting and art director Cassio Amarante's nostalgic re-creation of 1970 on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Daniel Rezende opts for strong elliptical editing that keeps audience involvement high, while Beto Villares' soft, understated score never disturbs.

Review from The Hollywood Reporter
Further proof of the wonderful renaissance of the Brazilian cinema.
The surfaces of Cao Hamburger's fine film, "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" (O Ano em Que Meus Pais Sairam de Ferias) are clean and concise and filled with keen observations about day-to-day life in a multiethnic quarter of Sao Paulo in 1970. This allows the director all sorts of opportunities to explore the rich subtext of his film -- themes about alienation, community and a life in exile.

This Brazilian film has the power to reach out to audiences all over the world. So after its Competition debut in Berlin, "Year" is a solid bet to win further festival dates and wide distribution in international territories.

The story, written by the director and Claudio Galperin, Braulio Mantovani and Anna Muylaert, tells of an adolescent boy who finds himself cut loose by fate in a strange community where he has to make friends and fend for himself. Twelve-year-old Mauro (Michel Joelsas) has grown up in a small town, consumed by a love for soccer. The entire country is electrified as its team is marching toward a potential third World Cup in Mexico. Citizens can almost forget they are in the sixth year of a brutal military dictatorship.

Abruptly, Mauro's mother, who is Catholic, and father, who is Jewish, must "go on vacation." It's clear to the viewer but not to Mauro that dangerous politics is forcing them underground. They drive the boy to Sao Paulo and leave him at his grandfather's apartment building. Unfortunately, the grandfather has dropped dead only minutes before Mauro's arrival.
Shlomo (Germano Haiut), an elderly next-door neighbor who works at the nearby synagogue, takes him in. But the boy resists Shlomo's reluctant overtures and wants to get into his grandfather's apartment. A precocious neighbor his age, Hanna (Daniela Piepszyk), tells him to get the superintendent to let him in. He then sits by the telephone, waiting for his parents to call and take him home.

Weeks go by and Shlomo doesn't know what to do with this boy who, despite a Jewish grandfather, he considers a "goy." Gradually, Mauro builds a sense of community in the Bom Retiro district, which in those days was home mostly to immigrants of Jewish, Greek, Italian and black origin. But Mauro sees himself as a goalie, a solitary figure that, while a team member, stands apart. He already understands himself as somehow different, as a person in exile just like his parents.

With Hanna he experiences a rite of passage that exposes him to affection, friendship and a peep hole in her mother's dress store where she charges neighborhood boys to watch women undress. Shlomo brings him in touch with his Jewish heritage, not that it has much impact. The beauty of Irene (Liliana Castro) sparks the fantasy lives of many adolescent boys. And through the student Italo (Caio Blat), Mauro sees the cracked skull one can receive for holding the wrong political beliefs.

Serious movies about children often are burdened with symbolism and coyness. But Hamburger has superbly crafted a film of considerable subtlety and shrewdness. As Mauro makes his way through the world of his parents and late grandfather, he comes into contact with people and ideas that expand his horizons and challenge his thinking.

Hamburger's depiction of a time and community under the stress of political upheaval is full and engaging but steers clear of nostalgia. Cassio Amarante's beautifully detailed production design benefits from somber, natural lighting by cinematographer Adriano Goldman. Beto Villares' music is just so. It never intrudes but brings in its Brazilian melodies at just the right spots.

Review from GreenCine Daily[
Cao Hamburger's O ano em que meus pais sairam de férias (The Year My Parents Went On Vacation) incidentally set a tone, a theme for the three screenings I caught this Friday: children abandoned or in some way neglected by bad or incompetent parents or parents simply otherwise engaged. Vacation falls into the latter category.

Brazil, 1970. The military dictatorship (1964 to 1985) makes no distinctions in its view of the violently suppressed opposition: socialists, social democrats, what have you, they're all (as the subtitles translate the term) "commies." It takes us a while to learn enough to be sure, but Mauro's parents are in some never-defined way wrapped up in subversive activities. Their situation, whatever it is, has become so dangerous that they can no longer stay at home. They've decided they will have to go "on vacation." And this is all they will tell Mauro (Michel Joelsas), their 12-year-old son. If anyone asks, they're on vacation; though they try to keep the truth from him, we can sense that it would be too risky for all three of them if he knew anything more.

1970 was a big year for Brazil for another reason, too. It was the year Brazil won the World Cup. If you remember last summer's World Cup, you might also remember that Brazilians are among the most enthusiastic of fans; in 1970, the competition probably meant even more to them as it held out a reason to celebrate their country and take their minds off all the torture, assassination and forced exile going on - never talked about out in the open, but always in the air. As Hamburger quipped at the press conference today, in many ways, then and now, "Soccer is the opiate of the people."

As Mauro's parents drive him to his grandfather's apartment in São Paulo, they phone him just before they arrive. "Does it have to be today?" the grandfather asks. It does. What Mauro and his parents don't know is why he's asked. He's not feeling too well. They also don't know that between that phone call and their arrival, the grandfather collapses in his barbershop. Dead.

Mauro's parents' big mistake: they leave him at the front door of the apartment building, not the apartment door itself. They don't know the grandfather's gone, much less for good. The grandfather's neighbor, Sholomo (Germano Haiut) discovers Mauro waiting at that door - he's been there for hours - and here, the comedic flavoring, a bit on the cutesy side, begins. We're in the Bom Retiro district of the city, populated by Jews, Italians, Greeks, Arabs, all the various immigrant communities. Like Mauro's grandfather, Sholomo, if you haven't guessed, is Jewish, and the first words he speaks to Mauro are an admonishment for playing in the hall. Spoken in Yiddish.

When Sholomo learns who Mauro's waiting for, the old man realizes he'll have to take the boy in. For the time being. Well, you can see where this is going. Mauro knows nothing of his Jewish heritage; Sholomo and the community about to absorb Mauro are considerably more orthodox than the South American Jewish communities we've seen in, say, the work of Daniel Burman. But of course, as the cultures clash and the gentle laughs roll, and all the while, the neighborhood rouses itself for the World Cup, we know we're heading toward seeing it all work out.

The chuckles, of course, are interspersed with moments of anger and sadness, but never anything too extreme or even, when it comes down to it, too consequential. This is a pleasant film, certainly fit for viewers of Mauro's age, even with its bittersweet ending. But you'll get no spoilers from me other than one: Brazil: 4, Italy: 1.

Interview With The Director
Despite not being autobiographical, The Year my Parents Went on Vacation contains a lot of elements from your early years, your memories, doesn’t it?

The film isn’t autobiographical, but the screenplay does contain a few of my memories, as well as that of Cláudio (Galperin, with whom the director wrote the screenplay and the development of its first treatments) as well as other people from our team. Pieces of our memories are there. We all worked in tune with our memories. Beginning with the screenplay through to the art, photography direction, etc.

Would you agree that this is a film which doesn’t fit in easily with the definitions used for the genre?

Yes, it isn’t a genre film. But neither is it a difficult film, it is involving, but ethereal in a certain way. I think that this is one of its interesting factors. If I were to define it, I’d say it was a movie about absence, about solitude and how to make the most of it. A film about overcoming obstacles.

In a way, is it also a film about exile, about vulnerability?

Without getting into much detail. It is a story about a boy exiled in his own country. A boy who, after learning to get along in a new environment, is exiled once again. This facet of the movie deals in a way with the cycles which exist in our lives, the way he learns that life is made up of cycles, that nothing is forever. Mauro says to himself: I came here alone and I managed to survive. It is a rite of passage, a time of discovery. He learns that life isn’t controllable, that it isn’t like a solitary game of button soccer, where you can repeat the plays, control the results...

And the choice of a Jewish community to serve as the backdrop for Mauro’s drama?

For me, the movie deals with the possibilities of different ethnic groups living together as well. Something which is exemplified in the scene of the soccer game between Italians, Jews and blacks. It isn’t the main element of the movie, but it is one of its strong points. Along with another strong point in the film which is the fact that Mauro is taken in by the Jewish community, by religious people and is not indoctrinated, not forced to “become Jewish”. Mauro’s relation to the things around him, his grandfather’s apartment is another interesting point. Just like our ancestors’ stories are part of our stories, his grandfather’s apartment, the different culture is now his, becoming a part of Mauro’s life.

Why did you choose the goalie figure?

The film isn’t about soccer, but the analogy with the solitary goalie is nice. I used to be a goalie and I felt it myself. The goalie is the odd guy on the team, the only one who catches the ball in his hands, who doesn’t attack, doesn’t make goals, defends, who sometimes becomes a hero, but a player who can’t fail, because if he does, he becomes one of the bad guys. It isn’t easy being a goalie. There’s this saying in Brazil which says: The goalie’s life is so hard that not even the grass grows where he plays.

You have a lot of experience directing kids. How was it directing Michel Joelsas (Mauro) and Daniela Piepszyk (Hanna)?

Michel and Daniela are incredible. Patrícia Faria, our casting director came back in a daze after her first visit to their schools. She couldn’t believe how smart, well-behaved, interested they both were.
Michel has incredible timing. He works in a frequency which helped him get through the whole movie. He is in 99% of the scenes, but doesn’t weary the spectators because he is always in a very cool, easy-going, cinematographic frequency, with his emotion in his eyes. Daniela is very charismatic and talented. They are both born actors.

Which cinematographic references inspired you the most in making The Year my Parents Went on Vacation?

I have pretty broad cinematographic influences. I like almost all good movies, which serve as food for thought, coming from different styles and genres. I think you could say it is a characteristic of my generation. I’m a big fan of Kubrick, Sergio Leone, Fellini, Spielberg, Chaplin, Kusturica, Japanese films, contemporary Argentine, Wim Wenders, Fernando Meirelles... I’m a big audiovisual mixing pot. But, with so many references, I try to find my own style, decanting and researching that which is most personal in different styles and narratives.

In this film I was after a more intimate frequency in everything. I tried to conduct the orchestra to play a pianissimo. In all the different segments of the film. In the acting, art direction, in the camera’s language itself, editing, etc. We tried not to stray from the frequency of the story we were telling, the cadence of the emotions that the characters were living. We didn’t want anything in the film to jump out on spectators, to stand out from the rest, to stand out in the story. I think the whole crew understood this and dove headfirst into this universe we were creating.

Did the choice of the camera’s position contribute to this “fantasy” environment?

Yes. It’s in the camera, which isn’t cold and impersonal; it emanates heat to the spectators. There is a certain subjective air which provides the film with a testimonial tone, it’s not a flat camera. This began in Filhos do Carnaval, in which I also worked with Adriano Goldman (director of photography and camera).

And how did you pick the people to work with you in The Year...?

Well, they say that 90% of the director’s work is choosing his team and cast. I agree with this. I handpicked my crew. I had already worked with most of them before, and those who were with us for the first time caught on really quick. Making films is crew work, and I really like the whole process. And the team has to be as involved as I myself am in the project, as it is together with them that I discover just what the film that we’re going to make is like. And, in an analogy with soccer, I had a first class team and we all played to the same tune.

How do you feel about being in the Berlinale Festival?

First of all, I’m very honored and proud to be in the Berlinale, one of the most important Film Festivals in the world. And for many reasons, I am very happy with the opportunity of starting the international career of "THE YEAR..." in the city of Berlin.

With my ancestors coming from Berlin, to me, it is like closing a cycle of an immersion into my father and grandfather’s culture. My father comes from a Jewish Berliner family but my mother is from a Catholic Italian family. Like Mauro, the main character in the film, my life has always revolved around dealing with differences, one of the film’s subjects and very appropriate nowadays.

I don’t think there could be a better place than Berlin for touching on this theme, a city known for its cosmopolitan and tolerant society in the 19th Century, and one which suffered through the horrors of both World Wars, and then, true to its vocation, broke down the wall and became once again one of the most important cities in the world in terms of culture and knowledge.

This is another point of contact between the city and the film, the cold war which split the city in two and led to Mauro’s condition as an exile. It is interesting how this little boy’s life was totally affected by the world situation - in a peripheral country, in a small community, so far way from the big decisions.

Awards
* Berlin International Film Festival - Nominated - Golden Berlin Bear
* Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival - Won - Audience Award











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