“Betania”, interview with the director Marcelo Botta

February 19, 2024

Marcelo Botta, director, "Betânia". A fantastic land, a strong woman and nature that shows is strength.

"Betania", interview with the director Marcelo Botta Angelo Acerbi

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“Betania” is the first narrative feature by Marcelo Botta, included in the Panorama section at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. Nature and sustainability are the key words to describe the story of a 65 years old woman who has to relocate in a nearby area in Brazil, after her village has been flooded.

We need to be aware

Marcelo Botta has an urgency to share: “we need to be more aware of nature and its changes. Some are already irreversible but we still have room to do something. That’s why in”Betânia” the dunes land shifts and changes so much: it is a symbol for the message he wants to convey”.

Music is everywhere and everything

“Betânia” is filled with musics, music is the motor for Botta‘s creativity and it describes better the region where the film is shot, north of brazil close to Jamaica and the Carribean. He also created a song himself specifically for the film, as an impulse of the last moment, as he tells us proudly.

Plot

Betânia is 65 and a stalwart family matriarch. In the wake of her husband’s death, her daughters persuade her to move back to the village where she was born and where the rest of her family still live. The village lies on the edge of the sand dunes of the Lençóis Maranhenses national park in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, in a newly desertified region not so far from the Amazon. Betânia leaves behind her simple, agrarian lifestyle without electricity and arrives in a place where tradition and modernity collide. Pushed by the ancestral sound of Maranhão, Betânia and her family fight to maintain their sense of identity. Despite the imposing sand dunes, polluted water, financial hardship and intergenerational quarrels, life finds a way, as it always does.
In 2018, Marcelo Botta filmed a documentary in the Lençóis Maranhenses national park. In Betânia, he addresses the ecological and socio-cultural problems in the villages whose desert oases are threatened by the encroaching sands.

Written by: Angelo Acerbi

Guest

Marcelo Botta