The clash between the natural rhythms of rural tradition and an automated modern world lie at the heart of Maya Da-Rin’s compelling feature debut.
Justino (impressive newcomer Regis Myrupu) works in Manaus, a vast industrial city surrounded by the Amazon rainforest. He is a security guard at the cargo port and has been support his daughter, Vanessa, whose reliance on his has magnified since the death of his wife, her mother. A nurse at a health clinic, Vanessa has been accepted to study medicine in Brasilia and will be leaving soon. Confronted with this change to his life, the oppression of the city, where he never quite fits in, and the distance of the village he left two decades earlier, Justino feels adrift in the world. As a fever gradually creeps over him, his days at work become indistinguishable from his fevered reveries at night.
The Fever presents Justino’s fractured perception of the world as a way of examining the way so many lives are lived within the context of global industry. Formally striking, the film makes the most of its locations and employs a subtle sound design to hint at the ways Justino’s past, growing up as part of the indigenous Desana community, still haunts him.
