An elliptical portrait of a young girl experiencing both rapture and torture starving herself as a way to find a place in a brutal uncertain world.
SYNOPSIS
In Clara’s life, the personal and political are intertwined. She lives with her parents in the outskirts of São Paulo that is slowly being taken over by organized crime. As her mother becomes a congresswoman in Brasilia, her family moves to the Federal District. There as Clara feels her mother’s life is increasingly imperilled, she descends into a downward spiral of self-destruction in which suffering has a life force.
The less she eats, the more power and energy Clara feels she has. Starving herself, Clara plunges into a routine based on calculations, repetition, and ritual: she ceases to menstruate and begins to experience an ecstasy in controlling time. She attempts to devise a geometry of hunger, an impossible theorem where her calculations of destruction at once incite liberation. At the age of 15, with 37 heartbeats per minute and weighing 29 kilos on a body of 1,64 m, Clara is hospitalized.
Produced by Petra Costa (THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY) and with an unsettling and electrifying soundtrack by David Lynch and Lykke Li, ÊXTASE is an immersive exploration of the agony and paradoxical pleasure of anorexia set against the backdrop of the chaotic political landscape of Brasil in the 1990s.
Both a deeply personal journey as well as a collective story of young women and their attempts to control the brutal world around them, director Moara Passoni, co-writer and associate producer on the Oscar® nominated documentary THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, puts fiction, delirium and reality in a conflicting symbiotic relation.
FESTIVALS AND ACCOLADES
AWARDS
Prix D’Innovation Daniel Langlois > Montréal Festival of New Cinema
(2020, Canada)
Youngsters 16 + Award / Best Film > Lucas International Festival of Films for Children and Young People
(2020, Germany)
Jury Award of the Brazilian Cinema Critics Association > São Paulo International Film Festival
(2020, Brazil)
Prix of the Portuguese Association of Authors > Porto/Post/Doc Film & Media Festival
(2020, Portugal)
Prix Cima for Best film Directed by a Woman > Cinema Jove
(2021, Spain)
Youth Jury Award for Best film > Cinema Jove
(2021, Spain)
NOMINATIONS
CPH:DOX Main Competition > CPH:DOX
(2020, Denmark)
Best Film Unipol Award International Competition > Biografilm Festival
(2020, Italy)
Discovery Award > International Women's Film Festival Seoul
(2020, South Korea)
Audience Award > Millennium Docs Against Gravity
(2020, Poland)
TVP Kultura Award > Millennium Docs Against Gravity
(2020, Poland)
Louve D’Or > Montréal Festival of New Cinema
(2020, Canada)
New Directors Competition > São Paulo International Film Festival
(2020, Brazil)
Up & Coming Competition > This Human World
(2020, Austria)
Aurora Awards > TIFF- Tromso International Film Festival
(2021, Norway)
Moon of Valencia for Best Film > Cinema Jove
(2021, Spain)
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Visions du Réel
(2020, Switzerland)
Semana del Documental > Doc Montevideo
(2020, Uruguay)
Mostra > Mostra Doc SP
(2020, Brazil)
IFF Pacific Meridian > Vladivostok
(2020, Russia)
Doc Fortnight > Museum of Modern Art - MoMA
(2021, USA)
L’Isola del Cine
(2021, Italia)
Ethnocineca - International Documentary Film Festival Vienna
(2021, Austria)
Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival
(2021, Canada)
Static Vision
(2021, Australia)
Selección oficial de la 19 edición del
Festival Internacional de Cine de Derechos Humanos
(2021, Argentina)
Female Filmmakers Festival
(2021, Berlin)
She Makes Noise
(2021, Madrid)
WHAT THE PRESS IS SAYING
Astonishing. Startingly unusual coming-of-age story
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE (US)
>
Restlessly inventive
SCREEN DAILY (UK)
>
Undermines certainties
EPOCA (BR)
>
Vital encroachment between documentary and fiction
INDIE-EYE (IT)
>
Passoni was inspired by the works of Marguerite Duras. She has the same passionate intensity
FILMUFORIA (UK)
>
An excellent example of how the extremely personal can hold universal insight
EYE FOR FILM (UK)
>
Squashing rebellion from both the inside and out
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE (US)
>
It listens, delicately, to a poetic whisper that interacts between the various stages of the character's growth
WALL STREET INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE (UK)
>
Passoni has made quite a mark on the filmmaking landscape
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (US)
>
A look at the architecture, power and politics of the body
VISIONS DU RÉEL: MOARA PASSONI (PT)
>
Delicate and personal
MARIE CLAIRE (BR)
>
The intelligence that supports the anorexic body, an extreme complexity that Ecstasy (Êxtase) fully manages to communicate, to return to the viewer who questions himself, without judging and without ever thinking about illness, because illness is not the point
CINEMATOGRAPHE (IT)
>
The universal character of the anxieties and experiences of women inserted in patriarchal systems, which manifest themselves in different ways in each one of us.
PERSONA CULTURAL CRITICISM (BR)
>
A sumptuous, multi-faceted feast for the eyes.
BUSINESS DOC EUROPE
>
Passoni has enlightened us all.
FILM THREAT
>
One of the year’s most daring hybrid titles.
FORBES
>
Passoni is truly a radical, visionary filmmaker.
Poetically written and gorgeously executed. Built on power and subtle emotion, this piece sits on a throne of its own.
A true marvel among marvels.
CORRIENTE LATINA
>
This is a film that will make you see not an intellectual truth but the much more powerful emotional one.
'Extase' blew me away.
UNSEEN FILMS
>
One of the festival’s biggest discoveries.
Gorgeously thoughtful and experiential rumination on one woman’s battle with anorexia.
Deeply moving.
CRITERION CAST
>
Flawless. (...) The geometry of hunger.
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
>
The silent nightmare of anorexia is straightforwardly portrayed and not sensationalized
REASON ONLINE
>
The film ends in the desire to open up to the other.
IRIS CINE
Q&A's
VISION DU REEL : Moara Passoni with Tereza Vieira for Antena 3 (Portuguese)
SEMANA DEL DOCUMENTAL DOC MONTEVIDEO : A conversation with Moara Passoni (Spanish)
DOC MONTEVIDEO: Q&A Moara Passoni and Fernando Epstein (Spanish)
FESTIVAL DU NOUVEAU CINEMA: Q&A Moara Passoni and Maxime Labrecque (English)
DOC SP: Q&A with Moara Passoni and Janice D’Ávila (Portuguese)
THE DIRECTOR
Moara Passoni co-wrote and associate produced the Academy Awards Nominee and Platino and Peabody Winner documentary THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY (Netflix Originals, Sundance Film Festival) for which she was nominated for best narrative for both Critic Choices Awards Documentary Awards and International Documentary Association. ÊXTASE is her first non-fiction feature film that premiered in the main competition of CPH:DOX 2020, receiving fabulous critiques.
Alumni from the L’atelier de Production de La Fémis/Cannes, Moara graduated in Sociology, Anthropology and Political Sciences (USP-SP); studied Dance and Performance (PUC-SP) and Aesthetics (Paris 8). After finishing a Master in Documentary Theory (UNICAMP-SP) she joined an MFA program on screenwriting/ directing at Columbia University where she is a current candidate.
Filmmaker Magazine named her one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" of 2020.
"Brazil, late 80’s, early ’90s.
A 15 year-old girl runs until she falls.
The story begins here - and will return to it again and again, as she tries to recount why, at some moment in her life, she fell into anorexia, and struggles to free herself from it.
The young woman is Clara, who we follow from the age of 7 to 17 and beyond. Clara was inspired by my own experience of anorexia."
ÊXTASE, 2020 (CPH:DOX)
Writer / Director / Producer
THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, 2019 (Sundance / Netflix)
Co-Writer / Associate Producer
FRANCESCA, 2017 (Harvard Film Festival, Brooklyn Women’s Film Festival)
Writer / Director / Producer
OLMO & THE SEAGULL, 2015 (Locarno)
Script collaborator / Associate Producer
ELENA, 2012 (IDFA)
Associate Producer
TILDEN’S DREAM, 2008 (É Tudo Verdade/ It's All True)
Director / Writer / Producer
THE FILMMAKERS
Funded by:
Edital ANCINE - Prodecine 05 - Inovação de Linguagem (Brazil)
CONTACT
+55 11 2373-7488
Aleksandar Govedarica at Syndicado Film Sales
+42 19 49635890
MOARA PASSONI:
© 2021 ÊXTASE FILME