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Logline

At the outset of the MeToo Movement, María, a disillusioned capoeirista in the Bay Area, California, whistleblows on her teacher for his past sexual abuse. Meanwhile, a litany of pedophilia scandals spanning decades surface in Capoeira in Brazil. María returns to Brazil for the first time in many years, exhuming her distant past, as she looks for justice and redemption for the art form she has dedicated her life to.

Synopsis

In 2005, María Schindler, a die-hard Capoeirista embarked on an epic bicycle trip from São Paulo back to her home in Petaluma, California. Armed with a camcorder, she documents her journey, playing and studying Capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial art created by African peoples enslaved by the Portuguese some time in Brazil’s early colonial period) at every stop along the way. She had discovered Capoeira in college at UC Berkeley and was enchanted by the Afro-Brazilian music, dance, history and culture. Capoeira became her life: she trained constantly at her Capoeira school, headed by Mestre (master/teacher) Marcelo. At the age of 24 she moved to Brazil to become completely immersed.

At the outset of her bicycle trip, she had known for some years of her mestre’s sexual relationship with a fellow student who was 14 years old when the abuse began. Everyone in her community remained silent and María spent decades conflicted and afraid to speak up.

Nearly twenty years later, the MeToo Movement began and María could be silent no more.

We meet María in 2024 at a Capoeira event in Berkeley, CA. She teaches and takes workshops in Capoeira music, play and culture. Then she gets up on the mic and begins to speak of community rupture and power and we learn that she is hurt and disillusioned from her community. She denounced her teacher to her community in the Bay Area in 2018 at the outset of the MeToo Movement. The reaction of her community was callous, confusing and disappointing and she left Capoeira.

After eighteen years away, María journeys back to Brazil to see what she can learn about how this happened and if she can find her way back to the art form she loves.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Adam Golub – Co-Director/Director of Photography
Adam Golub is an Israeli-American documentarian, media artist and videographer based in Brooklyn, NY. He earned his Masters from the Columbia School of Journalism and was a fellow at the UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art. His feature documentary Your Mother’s Comfort (2020) premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest and won the Grand Jury Award at Outfest, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro’s LGBT Film Festival and honorable mention at Newfest, New York among other awards. His film Skin, (2017) won Outstanding Documentary Short at Art of Brooklyn and Best Short at Newfest, New York. His short film I Was Here First premiered at DOC NYC. He is the creative director of The Generations Project, a non-profit dedicated to intergenerational LGBTQ+ storytelling. In this role, he curated and produced a permanent exhibit about the LGBTQ+ history of Provincetown, MA for the Pilgrim Monument Museum, told in short documentary and anecdotal anthology. He curated an online exhibition with OutMuseum in October of 2022 called “Brazilian Transrevolutionaries at the Edge of Democracy”.

María Schindler – Co-Director/Writer
María Schindler stumbled into her first Capoeira class during her first year at UC Berkeley, where she was studying English. Her love of the art form led her to a year-long full immersion experience in São Paulo when she finished her degree. There she decided to take a journey of a lifetime, riding her bike 13,000 miles back to California. During their 2-year trip, she stopped at 50 capoeira schools to study the philosophies of practitioners and how these were embodied in their teaching styles. Since her return to the United States, María has committed herself to social justice causes, working as a grant writer and then communications director for a number of nonprofit organizations, as well as volunteering for local housing justice initiatives. She graduated in capoeira to the level of Professora, and spearheaded a movement in the Bay Area to fight sexual abuse.

Thiago Zanato – Editor
Thiago Zanato is a Brazilian filmmaker living in Los Angeles, California. In 2018 he directed the short film La Flaca about a Mexican transgender woman and leader of the Santa Muerte (Saint Death) cult in Queens, NY which screened at OutFest, Frameline, LALIFF, New Orleans Film Festival, Fribourg International Film Festival and many others. In 2022 he premiered Esu and the Universe which won the Best Documentary Jury Award at the São Paulo International Film Festival and Best Documentary Audience Award at the Rio De Janeiro International Film Festival. The project was also selected to the Points North Fellowship, Latino Media Market – NALIP Media Summit, WIP latino at FICG in LA, DOCNYC and DOCSP.

Alice Arida – Fixer/Line Producer/Assistant Director of Photography
Alice Arida is a Brazilian photographer and videographer based in Sao Paulo. She earned her Masters from the Fine Arts at Universidade de São Paulo. “How it is… not to be here anymore” photographic series was finalist and has received honorable mention at Projeto Nascente and has been exhibited at Museu de Belas Artes da Faculdade do Porto, Centro Universitário Maria Antonia (SP), Paço das Artes and other collective exhibitions. Alice completed an extension course in Direction of Photography for Cinema at BARCO in São Paulo and has worked as a video maker and photographer on tv series, mini docs, short films and has directed two music video clips. Her work as a documentarian focuses on Brazil’s native people in the Amazon, and also contributes for other projects with environmental and social causes. Among some recent works is her videos for the observational doc about Capoeira and Vogue, directed by Johnny Simmons and Rashaad Newsome, called Get your Tens.

Marina Cavalcanti – Fixer/Line Producer/Assistant Editor
Marina is a video editor and photographer based in Rio de Janeiro. She studied editing at the Darcy Ribeiro School of Cinema at the Brazilian School of Audiovisual Arts and has a master’s degree in philosophy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She edited the film Your Mother’s Comfort (2020) which premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest and won the Jury Award at Outfest, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro’s LGBT Film Festival. In 2010, she edited the film Bodies That Escape (Corpos que Escapam), a short doc that tells the story of three central figures in the contemporary Brazilian movement for “divergent” embodiments. The film won Best Film Jury Prize at the Making Gender (Fazendo Gênero) Film Festival and was exhibited in festivals across Brazil. Her artistic process centers marginal and marginalized narratives that seek subversive power through audiovisual form, outside of the aesthetic norms of contemporary imagination.

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