Last Conversations

Just before his death in February 2014, famous Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho recorded a series of casual conversations with teens who enter an almost empty space one by one. He hopes to find out how they think, dream and live. His simple, empathetic questions about parents and school soon elicit very candid stories. There are girls growing up without a father or mother, because their dad has disappeared and their mom is always at work. There’s a boy who is bullied and has now fallen victim to a deep sense of boredom, and a teenage girl who feels threatened by her stepfather. But there are also plenty of light-hearted moments: a tough, teenage girl who sings Roxette’s “Listen To Your Heart,” another who writes poetry and a seven-year-old who fantasizes about what the world was like before she was born. “Adolescence is just miserable, that’s why I should have filmed kids,” concludes Coutinho, who did what he did best, listen, to the very end. was completed after Coutinho’s death by João Moreira Salles.