Bacurau

A few years from now . . . As Bacurau, a small town in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its ninety-four-year-old matriarch, its inhabitants (among them national cinema icon Sônia Braga) begin to notice a series of strange happenings: their village has literally vanished from online maps, cell phones have stopped working, and a UFO-like drone hovers menacingly overhead. An ominous force is converging on Bacurau, an unknown threat that will force the community to band together and fight for its survival. Luckily, the resourceful residents are more than up for the challenge. A blistering sci-fi thriller streaked with antiracist and anticolonialist rage, the new film from AQUARIUS director Kleber Mendonça Filho, codirected with Juliano Dornelles, is an audacious, furiously entertaining model of genre art as a vehicle for political resistance.