The production of “Angicos”, which will see Wagner Moura (“Narcos”) in the role of Paulo Freire, has been confirmed. The feature written and directed by Felipe Hirsch (“Severina”) will be produced by Adriana Tavares of Café Royal together with Paula Linhares of Cenya Productions and Marcos Tellechea and Guilherme Somlo of Reagent Media.
The feature film will tell the story of the pedagogical experiment that Freire conducted in 1963, in the city of Angicos, in Rio Grande do Norte, where he taught about 300 people to read and write in just 40 hours – a seemingly impossible feat.
In a statement, Hirsch also highlighted “the fascination among the people of Angicos for the battery-powered slide projectors that Freire used in his classrooms,” citing that residents “associated the screenings with the cinema — a rare thing in their town to at that time, as home the televisions hadn’t arrived yet”. “In this sense, ‘Angicos’ is also a film about the power of cinema and the power of knowledge,” he added.
Funded by President John F. Kennedy to consolidate Brazil as a Cold War ally amid global social and economic tensions, the success of the venture led to plans to roll out Freire’s education system across the country. However, shortly after the 1964 military coup, authoritarian local politicians opposed Freire’s educational initiative, considering the curriculum “subversive”, and sent the educator into exile. Which only strengthened the power of literacy and education against the dictatorship.
Freire was exiled for several years and returned to Brazil only after the redemocratization. Although his ideas on critical and liberating education are widely studied and applied around the world, he is still seen as a threat by the Brazilian far right and his legacy has suffered reprisals during the government of Jair Bolsonaro. The then education minister, Milton Ribeiro, publicly stated that the educator was “not compatible” with Brazil. In addition, there have been attempts to censor the distribution of his books in public schools, as well as to remove him from the list of patrons of Brazilian education.
The film has everything to provoke the Brazilian right, but it will have a better life than “Marighella”, directed by Moura, which faced numerous resistances to reach cinemas during the Bolsonaro government. With the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Paulo Freire once again raged in the country.
The rest of the cast is being selected for filming, which has been set for November this year.
Source: Terra
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