Pacified

About

Winner of the Golden Shell Grand Prize at the 2019 San Sebastian Film Festival, Paxton Winters' Pacified is a miraculous and transcendent cinematic experience. Evoking the hard-edged and shocking machismo world of the urban Brazilian favelas acclaimed in films such as City of God and Elite Squad, Winters' film focuses on a feminine hero, an introspective 13-year-old girl named Tati, and her relationship with her reformed father Jaco, a former gang leader who wants nothing more than to leave the culture of violence behind him.

Set in 2016, with the specter of the upcoming Rio Olympics creating a turbulent backdrop, Brazilian "pacification" police battle to maintain a tenuous occupation of the notorious Rio favelas. Tati and Jaco must navigate the clashing forces threatening to derail their hope for the future.

Born of a seven-year creative collaboration between the community of ‘Morro dos Prazeres' and writer/director, Paxton Winters, Pacified offers a bracingly intimate portrait of a family trying to find peace in the ever-shifting urban battlefield they call home.

This screening is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Director Bio

Paxton Winters is a director and writer who graduated at Bard College in Photojournalism and Camera Operator. His first feature Crude (03) won the IFP Los Angeles Film Festival Jury Award for Best Dramatic Feature and a Special Jury Prize at the Seattle International Film Festival. Residing in Rio de Janeiro for the past eight years, Paxton developed and shot Pacified (19), his latest feature film.