Director: Belisario Franca Producer: Maria Carneiro da Cunha
Description: Boy
23 follows a historian’s investigation about bricks branded
with the swastika, which were found in rural São Paulo. The
historian arrived at a frightening fact—Brazilian Nazis took fifty
black boys from an orphanage in Rio de Janeiro to the ranch where the
bricks were found. The boys were made slaves by a family that was
part of the cream of the crop of the political and economic oligarchy
in early 20th century Brazil. With the fall of Hitler, the family
aborted the project and left the boys to their own devices. The film
follows the life of two survivors, Aloísio Silva and Argemiro
Santos, who are willing to share their stories for the first time. A
very powerful Brazilian family and the farm owners, the Rocha
Miranda, removed fifty black boys from an orphanage in Rio de
Janeiro, promising them a better life. The reality was different and
harsher. Their fate was slavery and isolation. Aloísio, one of the
survivors, tells us the terrible experience these boys suffered to
point of eliminating even their names. He was named 23. The Nazi
ideology adopted by Brazilian elite and of course by the Rocha
Miranda Family planned to exclude an undesirable part of the
Brazilian population—the blacks and mixed-race majority. They were
considered a genetic and social obstacle to the plans of progress.
The film shows Sidney´s trial to find other survivors, a search with
frustrations and also victories. The diffuse memories of Aloisio came
out with a clue of another survivor, Argemiro. When Sidney finally
finds Argemiro, another fascinating story came out—up to that
moment he had never told his family about his childhood experiences.
He had decided to forget.
Biography: Belisario
Franca is a film/TV series director. For over two decades
Belisario dedicated his work to inventory both tangible and
intangible culture of Brazil through an investigative and critical
eye, but ludic enough to capture unique aspects of the country. An
intimate of Brazil's population reality, Belisario had his
audiovisual inventory formed with TV series and award-winning
documentaries both nationally and internationally. Among some of the
awards, stand out Beyond the Sea as the best television series
according to the International Documentary Association; Xavante
Strategy, bestowed by the UN with the title of the best creation
of art and media related to peace and Music of Brazil, awarded
the title of the best cultural production for TV at Grande Prêmio
Cinema Brasil. His latest work, the documentary Eternal Amazon on sustainable economy in the Amazon region, was launched at the
Première Brasil at Festival do Rio 2012 in the "Hors-Concours"
category.
