I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival

Rosa dives down into her childhood, to those disturbing moments when her mother was arrested, accused of killing her neighbour’s husband. Decades later, she sets out on a magical realist journey with the mother she never really had in order to finally rediscover some happy memories – through the landscapes of northern Brazil and those of her inner life. Together with her mother and sometimes without her, sometimes younger than her, sometimes appearing older, this road trip takes place in shimmering hills, the glowing light of the desert, a rickety hot dog van and the bright colours of the motel and bar scene; dealing with adapting and transforming roles, domestic violence, deep insecurities and how judgements are passed on; following a path of Brazilian easygoingness, leading to queer tenderness and healing. With the courage to narrate mental realities in fragmentary, cyclical fashion, lots of suspense, soundscapes and film references and two great actresses, Verônica Cavalcanti and Luciana Souza, Janaína Marques’s experimentally-minded feature debut builds a rocket in which wounds and empowerment, mothers and daughters and female lives and warmth all find their place. (Christiane Büchner, Barbara Wurm)

Janaína Marques is a Brazilian director and screenwriter, trained at the EICTV (Cuba). She is currently directing and writing the animated feature Os Olhos Do Caranguejo, a Brazil–Chile–Spain co-production. She signs the award-winning short film Los Minutos, Las Horas, which premiered in the Cinéfondation at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and received prizes in Clermont-Ferrand, Biarritz, Havana, San Sebastián and Zinebi, including the Prix Radi from the Agence du Court Métrage Française.

Director Janaína Marques. Screenplay Pablo Arellano, Xenia Rivery, Pablo Arellano, Taís Monteiro, Pedro Cândido. Cinematography Ivo Lopes Araújo. Editing Luísa Marques, Fred Benevides. Music Clau Aniz. Production Design Patrícia Passos. Costumes Isac Bento. Make-Up Elen Barbosa. Casting Nataly Rocha. Producer Mauricio Macedo. Executive Producers Isabela Veras, Maurício Macêdo. Production company Moçambique Audiovisual (Fortaleza, Brazil). With Verônica Cavalcanti, Luciana Souza, Fabíola Líper, Christiane de Lavor, Ridson Reis.

World sales Patra Spanou Film

Films: 2010: Los Minutos, Las Horas / The Minutes, The Hours (short film). 2012: Madrid (short film). 2026: I Built A Rocket Imagining Your Arrival.