I Made a Rocket, Imagining You Were Coming, by Janaína Marques

Rosa lies inside an MRI machine. She is asked to think of a happy memory, something she doesn’t have. It is time to create one, by returning to her childhood, when her mother was arrested and accused of murder. And there they are, in a realistic reverie, travelling in an old hot dog van along the dirt roads of northern Brazil. Janaína Marques’ feature debut is a guided tour through a mind in turmoil, its landscapes and its wounds.<br>

A mother and daughter, on the run through north-eastern Brazil, driving a hot dog van after an armed robbery, arrive at a hotel where the sign reads, ‘The Rabbit Hole’, in blue and red neon: this is Rosa in her imagined wonderland, when, inside an MRI scanner, the technician asks her to recall a happy memory. I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival proposes a therapeutic journey through the subconscious to rediscover, or invent, these memories. We witness the reunion between Rosa and her mother, Dalva (at times older, at others younger than her), who was imprisoned for many years after killing her neighbour’s husband. Janaína Marques takes flight with a sensitive and captivating debut feature film, which, with almost no male characters, tackles the themes of domestic violence, femicide, motherhood, love, and reconciliation honestly. Soul and heart in the form of a film. (Falcão Nhaga)