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

Rosa is lying in an MRI machine. She is asked to think of a happy memory—a memory she lacks. It is time to create one, by returning to her childhood, to the time when her mother was arrested and accused of murder. And there they are, in a realistic daydream, traveling in an old hot-dog truck along the dirt roads of northern Brazil. Janaína Marques’s debut feature film is a guided exploration of a tormented mind, its landscapes, and its wounds.

A mother and her daughter, on the run through northeastern Brazil in a hot dog truck after an armed robbery, arrive at a hotel where the sign, in blue and red neon, reads “The Rabbit’s Burrow”: this is Rosa in her imaginary world, when, inside the MRI machine, the technician asks her to recall a happy memory. “I Built a Rocket: Imagining Your Arrival” offers a therapeutic journey through the subconscious to rediscover—or invent—these memories. We witness the reunion between Rosa and her mother, Dalva (sometimes older, sometimes younger), who was imprisoned for many years for killing her neighbor’s husband. Janaína Marques delivers a sensitive and captivating debut feature that, with almost no male characters, accurately addresses the themes of domestic violence, femicide, motherhood, love, and reconciliation. A poignant and authentic film. (Falcão Nhaga)