DRY GROUND BURNING

Just released from prison, Léa (Léa Alves Silva) returns home to the Brasilia favela of Sol Nascente and joins up with her half-sister Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado), the fearless leader of an all-female gang that steals and refines oil from underground pipes and sells gasoline to a clandestine network of motorcyclists. Living in constant opposition to Jair Bolsonaro’s fiercely authoritarian and militarized government, Chitara’s women claim the streets for themselves as a declaration of radical political resistance on behalf of ex-cons and the oppressed.

Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival

Official Selection, Berlin Film Festival

“A politically incendiary ethnographic sci-fi…. In Dry Ground Burning, the future isn’t just female: it is Black, lesbian, profoundly matriarchal.” – Sight and Sound

“Riveting. A hybrid tale of Brazilian resistance, independence and survival. The directors forge an inventive cinematic language out of political consciousness… as it blends fiction and documentary, immersion and observation, to provide a multilayered embodiment of marginalised womanhood in contemporary Brazil." – Little White Lies

“A meticulous blend of fact and fiction... layered with suggestions of Westerns, gangster films, and even science fiction, all rooted in the real contemporary.” - Hyperallergic

“A furious, queer, boisterous gangster epic. In more ways than one Dry Ground Burning unfolds as a war over resources, a battle for oil and land that doubles as a kind of matriarchal Mad Max.” – The Film Stage