Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
The daily lives and routine of 37 families living in a huge 12-story building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro: their drama, aspirations, intimate revelations, loneliness, dreams...
Eduardo Coutinho's intimate portrait of 37 families in a single Copacabana building is a masterwork of observational documentary filmmaking. Its novelty lies in Coutinho's singular method: the building itself becomes a universe, and his extraordinary gift for drawing out confessional, deeply human testimony from ordinary people gives the film a one-of-a-kind voice that no other filmmaker could replicate. The cinematography is functional and unobtrusive rather than visually ambitious, serving the human material rather than asserting itself. The structure is episodic by nature, with no conventional plot arc, and the ending is quietly resonant but not dramatically climactic. Acting is not applicable in a traditional sense, though the subjects' candor and presence are remarkable. Overall, a film of exceptional humanist documentary craft.