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Opening Night: UK PREMIERE Dry Ground Burning + Q&A
Institute of Contemporary Arts
Dry Ground Burning (Mato seco em chamas), dirs. Adirley Queirós & Joana Pimenta, Brazil / Portugal, 2022, 153 min., Portuguese with English subtitles


Dry Ground Burning, a new Terratreme production directed by Adirley Queirós and Joana Pimenta, explores the turbulence of contemporary Brazil through the prism of the Gasolineiras de Kebradas: fearless Chitara, her sister Léa and their all-female gang in the Sol Nascente favela on the edge of Brasília, who hijack a pipeline in order to sell oil to their community. 

Arid landscapes, hand-made machinery and meta-dimensional narratives combine to present an almost dreamlike reality. Lived-in locations, spontaneous protests against the Bolsonaro regime, non-professional actors playing versions of themselves – all help to form fictionalised layers interwoven with everyday struggles, exploring a reality that keeps burning beneath and above the earth. Dry Ground Burning offers an unflinching contemporary – and, perhaps, futuristic – reflection on what it means to embrace communality with painful ardour.

This UK premiere is followed by a Q&A with directors Adirley Queirós and Joana Pimenta.

Also on Thursday:

 
Ticket information
  • All tickets that do not require ID (full price, disabled, income support) can be printed at home or stored in email
  • For aged-based concession tickets (under 25, student and pensioner) please bring relevant ID to collect at the front desk before the event.

All films are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with a 10 min. curated selection of trailers.

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