From afar, Rio’s Carnival often seems the quintessential expression of everything Brazilian. The intense and relentless rhythms incite a trance-like celebration, where song and dance amplify the joyful aura to its utmost hypnotising. The foreign onlooker gawks at the carnival because of its enthralling release from the usual reign of restraint and rationality. To them, it plays as a sensorial reverie whose exuberant exterior embodies the “exotic”, but beyond the initial flash and pan, there’s a communal force deeply ingrained in the event.

Felipe Casanova’s O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo confronts this by going back to the carnival’s ethos. The Swiss-born, Brussels-based filmmaker grew up in Rio. His recollections of the space stem from a marvellous intersection of personal stories and lived experiences. The camera is at the heart of the celebration, awestruck by the ornate dancing troupes flocking the streets and the colourful floats showcasing the eclectic cultural convergence of indigenous, West African, and East Asian mythologies that make Brazilian iconographies so vibrant and distinct. These longstanding customs and traditions take the nation’s heterogeneous ancestry and mold it to the singularity of the present community. After all, people from all walks of life gravitate towards the carnival for a myriad of reasons—hedonism, but also grief and resistance; sometimes all at the same time. 

Without the need to even utter a word, carnival attendees get to dialogue with their environment through song and dance. Be it as reclamation of neglected histories, a brief escape from the structural inequality of Latin American capitalism, or as a way to display their immediate concerns and struggles in a public forum, within the carnival’s realm of hyperreality, many seek some form of solace. 

O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo specifically focuses on Ilma, a mother writing to her son who is missing due to the brutality that the Brazilian police exerts on Rio’s infamous favelas. Her voice cracks down as the slowed-down, Super 8 footage of the carnival feels like a phantasmagoria full of lurking spectres. At some point, one of these sweating bodies and ecstatic faces belonged to her son who walked the same streets. Despite his physical absence, his spirit is still felt in the space, as it is weighed down by his memories. Suddenly, the same streets seem different; the textures of the images switch from the dreamy enchantment of celluloid to the rawness of unfiltered digital images. The congregation on screen is also different; anger is now at the forefront, cheerful chants give way to howls of desperation, and samba’s characteristic batucada is drowned out by a dissonant drone. 

Two things can be true at the same time: the emotional core between sequences presents a jarring contrast, and it is still clearly the same space, reclaimed by the same kind of popular action that bypasses any generalised, national identity. Both in joy and anger, patterns of communal memory are showcased in the streets. Ilma’s son, and many who like him are lost to state negligence and systemic violence, will never cease being part of the local landscape. It all comes full circle, and, as the title suggests, Rio remains beautiful.