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Tiago Melo‘s sci-fi satirically tinged drama “Yellow Cake” has debuted its trailer ahead of the world premiere in the Tiger Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Urânio Filmes is handling world sales.
This is Tiago’s second feature film following “Azouge Nazare,” which premiered at IFFR in 2018 and won the Bright Future Award.
The film stars Rejane Faria, Valmir do Côco, Spencer Callahan and Tânia Maria, who also appears in Oscar nominated “The Secret Agent.”
The film is set in the Brazilian city of Picuí, in the Paraíba backlands. Here a group of scientists is trying to eradicate the deadly Aedes aegypti mosquito — the vector of dengue fever — through a secret experiment codenamed Yellow Cake.
Using uranium extracted from the region, the project aims to sterilize the mosquitoes and contain the spread of the disease. The nuclear physicist Rúbia Ribeiro (Faria) acts as the link between the Brazilian military command and the project’s controversial leader, Bill Raymond (Callahan), whose urgency to see results leads him to disregard safety protocols. When the experiment fails, it is up to Rúbia to join forces with local prospectors to reverse the imminent catastrophe.
Melo said, “The starting point was to imagine an extreme public policy, conceived by foreign scientists, that attempts to solve a national problem—the spread of diseases transmitted by Aedes aegypti—through nuclear testing. From there, the film unfolds as both a satire and a reflection on Brazil’s long-standing relationship with global powers that claim to ‘help,’ but often turn the country into a laboratory for their ideas.”
The screenplay is by Amanda Guimarães, Anna Carolina Francisco, Gabriel Domingues, Jeronimo Lemos and Melo.
“Yellow Cake” is produced by Carol Ferreira, Leonardo Sette, Luiz Barbosa and Melo. The production companies are Lucinda, Jaraguá and Urânio. The co-producers are Olhar and Cinemascópio, the producers of “The Secret Agent.”
English (US) ·