IFFI Goa 2025, 07: On the trail of the opening film, The Blue Trail, Berlinale Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize-winner

IFFI Goa 2025, 07: On the trail of the opening film, The Blue Trail, Berlinale Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize-winner

Hoping to start with a bang, IFFI 2025 has chosen The Blue Trail s its opening film. Released in 2015, it is directed by Gabriel Mascaro. A Mexico-Chile-Netherlands-Brazil co-production, it is in Portuguese, with English sub-titles, and runs for 86 minutes. The Blue Trail can be categorised both as riding the twin genres of drama and sci-fi.

Let us see what is known about the film, and how has it been received internationally.

Berlinale

Tereza, 77, has lived her whole life in a small industrialised town in the Amazon, until one day she receives an official government order to relocate to a senior housing colony. The colony is an isolated area where the elderly are brought to “enjoy” their final years, freeing the younger generation to focus fully on productivity and growth. Tereza refuses to accept this imposed fate. Instead, she embarks on a transformative journey through the rivers and tributaries of the Amazon to fulfil one last wish before her freedom is taken away – a decision that will change her destiny forever.

Gabriel Mascaro, the director and screenwriter, was born in Brazil, in 1983, and is based in Recife. His films have won over 50 international awards. Neon Bull was selected as one of the Top 10 Best Films of 2016 by “The New York Times”. In the same year, his work was presented in a retrospective at the Lincoln Center in New York. In 2019, his film Divine Love screened in Panorama at the Berlinale.

Filmography

2012 Housemaids (Doméstica), documentary

2014 Ventos de Agosto (August Winds) awarded with a special mention.at Locarno

2015 Boi Neon (Neon Bull)

2019 Divino Amor (Divine Love); Panorama

2025 O último azul (The Blue Trail)

The Screen Daily

This brightly coloured odyssey is a spirited rebuke to ageism.

In a futuristic yet hyper-bureaucratised Brazil, retirement has questionable consequences. On the one hand, 77-year-old Tereza is hailed as a ‘national living heritage’; on the other, she has been placed under the guardianship of her daughter, and will soon be forced to live in a colony for seniors. But Tereza has one rather big dream left: to fly on a plane before she’s shipped off and forgotten. Embarking on a fantastical journey through the Amazon, she encounters a blue drool-discharging snail with an ability to chart a person’s destiny, a shady boat captain and a sly new friend with secrets – and lessons – of her own.

Known for his penchant for vivid colour, director Gabriel Mascaro (Divine Love) once more brings his palette of saturated hues and surreal beauty to the screen – this time, in collaboration with cinematographer Guillermo Garza, shooting in an intimate 4:3 ratio. Veteran Brazilian stage and screen actor Denise Weinberg delivers a warm, luminous performance as Tereza, while Rodrigo Santoro (300) lends his own star power to enigmatic helmsman Cadu. A richly imaginative tale of dignity, dreams and resistance, The Blue Trail scooped three awards at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival.

“Centred on a winning performance from Brazilian stage and screen veteran Denise Weinberg … The Blue Trail is entrancingly unpredictable in its picaresque unravelling.”

Toronto International Film Festival

Brazilian auteur Gabriel Mascaro returns with a bold, near-future odyssey. A 75-year-old woman escapes surveillance and forced retirement, taking a boat through the Amazon to chase her dream of flight. A tender, defiant journey of resistance, rebellion, and self-discovery.

Gabriel Mascaro made waves at the Festival in 2015, with Neon Bull. The Trail departs from a dystopian near future and takes us on an unexpected journey of self-discovery and determination.

Self-reliant Tereza (screen and stage veteran Denise Weinberg) has never needed much from others, but at 75 she’s suddenly relieved of her job at an alligator meat processing plant and placed under the jurisdiction of her daughter, who must approve every decision she makes.

In this alternate Brazil, an overbearing government goes out of its way to praise the elderly while erasing them from active societal participation via extreme surveillance and belittling aggressions such as the “wrinkle-wagon” that nabs those who get out of line. There is also the threat of being sent to The Colony, from where it is said most never return.

Prompted by a friend’s question about her bucket list, and refusing to take the nonsense she’s currently facing, Tereza hits the road, jumping aboard a semi-legal boat that might take her closer to Itacoatiara, a place where she wants to fulfil her dream of flying on a plane, even if it’s an ultra-light one.

This road movie with no roads but incredible Amazonian waterways has a gentle feel that counters the oppressive ways of a hypocritical society. There’s no going back for Tereza, and the characters she joins along the way show her all the possible freedoms she never knew she didn’t have.

--Diana Cadavid