The Colônia Hospital was founded in 1903 under the direction of Dr. Joaquim Antônio Dutra. Located in the Brazilian municipality of Barbacena, in the heart of the Mantiquera mountains, it was one of the largest asylums in Brazil, active for decades. Its initial capacity was 200 patients, but during the 1960s it was forcibly expanded to over 5000 patients, treated in inhumane conditions.
Most of them were underdressed, some even naked, forced to work, including children, the elderly, and the disabled. Patient would constantly die due to diseases, malnutrition, exposure to low temperatures, or aggressive therapies such as electroshock, and sometimes even murder. Their bodies were often smuggled to universities, buried nearby or dissolved in acid. It is estimated that these treatments led to the death of about 60,000 people, representing one of the cruellest violations of human rights in recent Brazilian history.
Under the pressure of the media and thanks to the new approach of Franco Basaglia (not only in Italy), in 1980 the national anti-asylum movement managed to close the hospital and transfer the few survivors to appropriate care facilities, obtaining compensation from the state. In 1996, the hospital was transformed into the “Museum of Madness”.
It is also important to remember that over 70% of the patients had never received a psychiatric diagnosis but were interned for political reasons or due to social prejudices (sometimes families were accomplices). Meaning epileptics, alcoholics, prostitutes, homosexuals, enemies of the local elite, people considered “inadequate” according to the social norms of the time, homeless individuals, unwanted children or women who had lost their virginity before marriage.
And this is precisely the case of the protagonist of Nobody Leaves Alive, a feature film that tells the story of this “Brazilian holocaust” (as defined by investigative journalist Daniela Arbex’s book). The story is articulated through the figure of a twenty-three-year-old pregnant woman, interned with the complicity of her family for refusing to marry the suitor chosen by her father, in love with the father of her unborn child. A child who will never be born.
Directed by André Ristum, Nobody Leaves Alive will have its premiere on November 14th at the PÖFF – Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
The 1960s had already been narrated by the director in O Outro Lado do Paraìso (2014) which, through the story of a father narrated by his son, brings to light the political turmoil of the time and the military coup of 1964.
In this latest work, which has yet to be released, the socio-political context is simply a pretext to give voice to the victims of violence that has a specific context, the Colônia Hospital, but actually speaks for all the injustices and cruelties that the system – whatever socio-political system – has ever inflicted on the weakest.
It is something that we must never stop fighting for, never stop being scandalized by, and never stop telling, because in contexts where – as today – systematized cruelties of all kinds are unfortunately still commonplace, the only weapon that art has to contribute to the fight for good is to speak, tell, dig, investigate, and do it again and again.
That being said, this is the only power and only quality of the film.
The interpretation of the characters is undoubtedly engaging, and the choice of black and white is fitting.
However, this work does not seem to present any other interesting elements, neither in terms of plot nor stylistically. It seems to slip into a series of predictable and forced plot twists and naiveties which could have easily been handled differently.
The result is a predictable work, paradoxically not very engaging despite the subject matter, and it looks to great predecessors like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) without even coming close.
A similar work had been attempted by Hungarian director Gabor Fabricius, presenting Erasing Frank at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, but with much better results than the Brazilian film in terms of narrative density and stylistic attention, resulting in something both shocking and intriguing.
In short, Nobody Leaves Alive falls into the category of films that should be taken as merely “informative” ones: they must be watched as they open our eyes to certain historical passages or fundamental topics, but they do not present any other value.
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