Self Fiction

Self Fiction
Dir. Ricardo Targino | Prod. Vania Catani | 100 min | Completion: Oct/2025
A dive into Brazil's mixed-race soul and the complexity of its racial identities. Through the journey of director and activist Ricardo Targino, the film intertwines the personal and the political as it traverses the ruins of colonialism to reach the DNA of the climate crisis that threatens to transform the Jequitinhonha Valley into a climate cemetery, with 18 of the 20 cities that have warmed the most in Brazil.
"Climate crises through decolonial lenses"
It's not just about documenting the present, it's necessary to reinterpret the past to save the future. This is the role of fiction in documentary: it is a political act for the invention of possible futures.
The Epicenter of the Climate Crisis
The Jequitinhonha Valley, once known as the "Valley of Misery," now stands at the epicenter of Brazil's climate crisis. With temperature increases exceeding 2.5°C above historical averages in some areas, the region faces prolonged droughts, accelerated desertification, and severe water scarcity—all exacerbating existing social problems.

Environmental racism drives this crisis in a region where 70% of the population is mixed-race and black. The Valley bears the burden of Brazil's extractive economy, with 80% of the country's mining concentrated in predominantly Black territories. This colonial exploitation continues with lithium mining—despite holding 15% of Earth's reserves, this "energy transition" mineral accelerates local devastation rather than creating economic opportunity.

Traditional communities, family farmers, and quilombola populations face the most extreme climate vulnerability, risking displacement and livelihood loss. Rather than merely documenting these challenges, the film actively intervenes to build political alternatives, revitalizing cinema as a revolutionary force.
A Crossroads Film
This documentary examines the intersections of history, identity, and environment in the Jequitinhonha Valley. As a crossroads of socio-environmental issues, the film explores four dimensions that define this emblematic Brazilian region.
Racial Identity
The director's quest to understand their mixed heritage, exploring African, Indigenous, and European roots that merge in the Valley's cultural melting pot. A personal journey reflecting Brazil's racial formation and historical silences.
2
Climate Crisis
The Valley as a laboratory of Brazil's environmental contradictions. We document landscape transformations, rising temperatures, water scarcity, and communities adapting ancestral practices to survive new climate realities.
Coloniality
The aftermath of centuries of exploitation and environmental racism. We show extractive policies from colonial to contemporary times, revealing how power structures perpetuate social and environmental inequalities.
Possible Futures
Fiction as a tool to imagine new pathways. Through speculative narratives created with local communities, we propose development alternatives that honor traditional knowledge while embracing sustainable technologies.
By weaving these dimensions together, the film invites reflection on the crossroads defining not only the Jequitinhonha Valley, but Brazil itself—a country negotiating between its colonial past, present crises, and possible futures.
Loading...
Three Biomes, Three Centuries
Caatinga
Resilient vegetation that thrives despite drought. Like Valley residents, it regenerates with each rainfall. Its adapted plants—mandacarus, xique-xiques, and juremas—embody endurance. Local communities have developed ancestral techniques to coexist with scarcity, learning patience and perseverance from this hardy landscape.
Cerrado
A biodiverse savanna threatened by expanding agribusiness. Its twisted trees harbor ancient wisdom while its watersheds nourish the Valley. Native fruits—pequi, buriti, mangaba—have sustained generations and inspired local crafts. Today, encroaching monocultures endanger both this ecosystem and traditional livelihoods.
Atlantic Forest
Remnants of coastal woodland persisting against odds. Though reduced to less than 10% of its original extent, these green fragments shelter unique endemic species, protect vital springs, and regulate local climate. Traditional communities preserve knowledge of rare medicinal plants found only in this biome, now threatened by urban and industrial expansion.
Environmental Racism
The Jequitinhonha Valley exemplifies environmental racism in Brazil through centuries of resource exploitation and marginalization of vulnerable populations.
18th Century
Extraction of gold and diamonds. Wealth flows to Portugal. Enslaved people die in the mines.
The gold cycle enriched the Portuguese Crown while devastating rivers and claiming thousands of Black lives. Communities were forced to work in inhumane conditions, facing disease, accidents, and executions.
2
19th Century
Deforestation for plantations. Traditional communities are expelled from their lands.
As mining declined, vast areas were cleared for monocultures. Quilombola and indigenous groups lost ancestral territories. The 1850 Land Law formalized exclusion, barring former enslaved people from land ownership.
20th Century
Dams and "developmental" projects. Rivers are diverted. Territories are flooded.
The military regime constructed dams displacing thousands of families. Itaperica Hydroelectric Plant submerged historic communities. Eucalyptus plantations for steel production depleted water sources and reduced biodiversity.
4
21st Century
Lithium extraction for "clean energy". The green of the energy transition is blood-red.
Now the Valley serves as a lithium mining hub for electric vehicles. Operations contaminate water, cause respiratory illness, and continue exploitation cycles. Local communities remain excluded from decisions and benefits of this "development."
This pattern shows how racial minorities disproportionately bear environmental burdens while economic benefits flow to distant elites.
The Demographic Shift
This demographic change challenges established social structures and prompts Brazil to reflect on identity and citizenship in a country marked by racial inequalities despite its diverse cultural makeup.
2022 Census
For the first time, the pardo (mixed-race) population forms Brazil's majority at 45.3%, surpassing the 43.5% white population, marking a historic shift in the country's ethnic composition.
Parditude
Mixed-race identity emerges as a political and cultural force, representing both demographic affirmation and a reinterpretation of Brazilian miscegenation long used to support the myth of racial democracy.
Reconfiguration
Traditionally white power structures face new challenges as the rising pardo population demands representation in politics, media, academia, and the workplace.
New Chapter
Brazil now has a historic opportunity to rewrite its national narrative, acknowledging both the violent aspects of miscegenation and the cultural resilience that emerged from this process.
Between Erasure and Power
The experience of mixed-race Brazilians represents a complex journey through national history. For centuries, miscegenation was simultaneously celebrated as a symbol of "racial democracy" and made invisible in the structures of power and representation.
1
Revolutionary Power
Mixedness as a force for social transformation
2
Recognition
Struggle for visibility and rights
3
Ambiguity
Between the privilege of whiteness and the oppression of blackness
4
Historical Erasure
Invisibilization and marginalization of miscegenation
Colonial racial systems attempted to simplify Brazilian complexity into rigid categories, systematically erasing mixed-race identity and denying rights to the majority population.
Mixed-race Brazilians occupy an ambiguous position, sometimes receiving advantages compared to Black people, sometimes facing discrimination for not being white—creating unique identity tensions that define their experience.
The recognition of mixedness as a political category advances the Brazilian anti-racist struggle, providing a place of belonging while challenging both the myth of racial democracy and binary racial narratives.
This demographic majority now represents the potential to reconfigure Brazil's social structures, proposing models that transcend colonial racial hierarchies while honoring the specificities of the country's diverse historical experience.
The Creative Process
Translating identity issues into cinematic language requires deep research and bold experimentation.
Investigation
Family interviews, historical research, and gathering documents that evidence the family's journey.
Experimentation
Testing visual languages to express mixed identities through poetic and metaphorical techniques.
Collaboration
Engaging with artists and activists working on racial issues to build networks of support.
Realization
Creating documentary as both political action and personal reflection, using camera as tool for transformation.
The Ancestral Journey
A self-discovery pilgrimage across the Atlantic, connecting stories separated by centuries of diaspora—a deep dive into Afro-Brazilian identity roots.
Departure from Brazil
The director leaves Jequitinhonha Valley, a region rich with African traditions. He carries lifelong questions about identity and belonging, with the arid Minas Gerais landscapes foreshadowing his ancestral return.
Arrival at the Slave Coast
African soil awakens profound sensations beyond reason—a simultaneous return and discovery. The body recognizes what the mind cannot. Familiar-strange sensations create emotional connections, allowing ancestors who never returned to return through him.
Dialogue with Ancestors
Local community encounters reveal connections that transcend time and space: shared rituals, identical gestures, and resilient words. Common colonial wounds and freedom dreams unite them, while griots' stories complete generations of fragmented family histories.
Transformed Return
Returning to Brazil brings new perspective—the foreign now recognized as familiar, the familiar revealing overseas origins. Identity emerges not as an answer but as an evolving question. The resulting documentary opens paths for other Brazilians to undertake their own journeys of reconnection.
This journey represents millions of stories interrupted by forced diaspora and today's efforts to rebuild Atlantic bridges—no longer as slave routes but as paths to reconnection and healing.
Personal is Political
Identity Crisis
The director confronts his racial contradictions, questioning his position and examining his privileges and oppressions. Ricardo Targino embraces discomfort to understand his existence in a racially stratified society.
Mirror of the Nation
His personal history reflects Brazil itself - mestizo, divided, complex. Like the country, he bears the marks of colonialism, slavery, and whitening attempts that have shaped Brazilian national identity.
Body as Territory
The mestizo body bears historical violence and possibilities for healing. This body-territory becomes a field of political dispute, where wounds of the past and present resistances coexist. Brownness embodies both pain and transformative power.
Reconnected Ancestry
A search for roots denied by official history and reappropriation of African and indigenous legacies. Reconnection with silenced ancestors enables futures where diversity is celebrated as equity and justice, not as a myth of racial democracy.
The Transatlantic Tunnel
Excavating Memory
Unearthing stories silenced by colonization and rescuing narratives erased by time - a process of cultural archaeology.
Building Bridges
Reconnecting Brazil and Africa through cultural exchanges, honoring ancestral ties, and fostering dialogues that transcend the dividing ocean.
Rebirth Transformed
Emerging into a world where identities are fully recognized, enabling reconstruction beyond historical wounds.
This metaphor of an underground tunnel connecting Brazil and Africa symbolizes a psychic and spiritual path to overcome colonial legacy. It represents an underground space of resistance where the Atlantic waters unite rather than separate shared experiences.
This symbolic journey invites self-discovery and challenges official narratives. By traversing this tunnel, Brazilians and Africans reconnect as parts of a common history fragmented by colonial violence, now healing through recognition and reconciliation.
Kill the White Man Within You
Mental Decolonization
Free yourself from Eurocentric thinking patterns. Question dominant narratives and embrace diverse knowledge systems. Unlearn colonial values to build a more inclusive worldview.
Inner Transformation
Confront internalized privileges and prejudices. Examine how power structures operate within you. Develop racial consciousness to recognize and dismantle oppressive patterns in your behavior.
Everyday Revolution
Practice daily resistance against structural racism. Transform relationships through equity-based interactions. Create spaces where diverse identities can thrive without hierarchies.
This journey isn't about guilt, but collective liberation. Dismantling the "inner white man" means abandoning mental structures that perpetuate inequality and embracing our full humanity within a diverse world.
Racism and Climate Crisis
Climate impacts are not neutral - they directly connect to historical racial oppression. Understanding these links is essential for environmental justice.
Colonialism
Predatory exploitation of territories and peoples
Colonial structures established patterns of domination that persist in current geopolitics. Traditional communities' sustainable relationships with their environments continue to be destroyed in the name of progress.
Extractivism
Economic model based on plundering resources
Extractivism treats nature merely as a source of raw materials. This model fuels Global North economies while devastating environments in the Global South, primarily affecting Black and Indigenous populations.
Inequality
Unfair distribution of environmental impacts
Environmental degradation impacts communities unequally. Racialized populations suffer first from climate disasters and pollution while contributing least to emissions and having minimal influence on environmental policies.
Sacrifice Zones
Black and Indigenous territories condemned to destruction
Marginalized communities often inhabit "sacrifice zones" where polluting industries and extractive projects concentrate. This distribution of environmental risk follows racial segregation patterns, revealing which lives are considered disposable in the global capitalist system.
Climate justice requires both technical solutions and transformation of social structures perpetuating racial inequalities. True sustainability demands addressing environmental racism in all its forms.
The Lithium Valley
Lithium mining in the Jequitinhonha Valley is creating a new environmental sacrifice zone despite being essential for global energy transition. Corporate "green economy" rhetoric masks the continuation of colonial extractive practices.
Mining corporations promise development but deliver expropriation. While the Global North benefits from electric vehicles and batteries, Valley communities suffer intensified drought, water contamination, and disruption of traditional lifestyles.
This situation highlights the connection between climate crisis and environmental racism, perpetuating historical inequalities. The "just transition" proves unjust when examining who bears the true cost of mineral extraction supporting global green economies.
The Aesthetical View
Sequence Shots
Long takes that connect body and landscape in a visceral experience. Viewers inhabit the territory alongside characters, experiencing time and space fully. These sustained images reveal deeper meanings hidden from hasty observation.
Non-linear Narrative
Mirrors memory's fragmentation and challenges certainties. The Valley's experience is reflected in folded chronology, creating temporal juxtapositions between past and present. This structure demands active audience engagement to reconstruct meaning.
Hybrid Sound Palette
Merges intimate with historical, traditional with experimental. Female ceramists' work songs blend with contemporary sounds, while landscape silences are broken by memory-laden oral accounts. This sonic approach bridges generations and knowledge systems.
Terracotta and Green
Earth tones contrast with persistent life. The film's colors reflect Jequitinhonha Valley's duality: scarcity/abundance, tradition/rupture. Ceramic and arid landscape earthy tones are punctuated by green flashes, symbolizing resilience amid exploitation.
Building Alternatives
Pathways to a sustainable future rooted in ancestral knowledge and community innovation.
1
Agroecology
Sustainable food systems respecting the land as an alternative to predatory agribusiness. Combines indigenous wisdom with modern techniques for pesticide-free production, enhancing biodiversity and local economies.
2
Local Culture
Preserving traditional knowledge where art serves as resistance and living memory. Cultural practices strengthen identities and community cohesion through orality, rituals, and generational wisdom that has survived colonization.
3
Climate Justice
Social technologies merging ancestral knowledge with innovation. Promotes community energy autonomy and defends traditional territories against extractivism, while addressing historical inequities in climate impact.
These alternatives are both technical solutions and political proposals challenging dominant development models. They exist in communities today and can be expanded as seeds of a more equitable future.