The Year My Parents Went on Vacation () is a 2006 Brazilian drama film directed by Cao Hamburger. The screenplay, which took four years to be completed, was written by Hamburger, Adriana Falcão, Claudio Galperin, Anna Muylaert and Bráulio Mantovani. It won 36 awards in 18 film festivals where it competed.
It was submitted by the Ministry of Culture for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not one of the finalists. For some, this choice was unexpected, since it was thought that José Padilha's Elite Squad would be submitted, with there being some supposition that the criticism of Elite Squad appearing to be in favor of using violence to end trafficking and accusations of promoting fascism contributed to the decision to nominate The Year... instead.
Michel Joelsas, who plays Mauro, received a nomination in the 2007 Young Artist Awards for Leading Young Performer.
In 2015, the Brazilian Film Critics Association aka Abraccine voted O Ano... the 98th greatest Brazilian film of all time, in its list of the 100 best Brazilian films.
Plot The story takes place entirely during a few months in 1970, in the city of São Paulo. Mauro, a 12-year-old boy, is suddenly deprived of the company of his young parents, Bia and Daniel Stein, who are political activists on the run from the harsh military government, which was strongly repressing leftists all over the country. Against this backdrop of fear and political persecution, the country is at the same time bursting with enthusiasm for the upcoming World Cup, to be held in Mexico, the first one to be transmitted live via satellite.
Unable to take care of their only child, the Steins, who live in Belo Horizonte, drive all the way to São Paulo to deliver the boy to his paternal grandfather, Mótel, who is a barber. To their son, they say they will travel on vacation and promise to return for the World Cup games. However, the grandfather dies on the same day the boy arrives, and he is left clueless and without support in Bom Retiro, a working-class neighborhood inhabited mainly by Jews, many of whom speak Yiddish, an unknown language to the boy. As his father is Jewish, the close-knit Bom Retiro community rally in support of the child and Shlomo, a solitary elder and religious Jew who was a close neighbor and friend of Mauro's grandfather, assumes the care of Mauro.
Mauro is a football enthusiast and wants to be a goalkeeper. He gradually mixes in with other neighborhood children and becomes acquainted with a number of colorful characters, including Hanna, a girl his age; Ítalo, a politically active student from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo; Irene, a beautiful female bartender and her boyfriend, the mulatto ace goalkeeper of one of the local football teams; the local rabbi and assorted Jewish elders, Italian immigrants, and so on.
To Mauro's great disappointment, his parents neither appear as promised at the World Cup nor give any notice. Fearing the worst, Shlomo starts to investigate by himself and is arrested by the political police because of his meddling. Finally, he achieves the release of Mauro's mother, who is severely ill after the prison term. Her reunion with her child happens on the very same day as Brazil's final victory at the World Cup. (Mauro's father disappears while in the dictatorship's clutches, never to return.) At the end of the film, Mauro says farewell to his recent friends and playmates as he and his mother leave Bom Retiro and prepare to go into exile.
Cast
Production Originally, the film was approved for production funding from the Brazilian government under the title My Life as a Goalkeeper (), but the title was changed due to concerns that female audiences would be less inclined to watch it with soccer so prominent in the title. The name change was approved on 1 November 2006, with funding approved through 31 December 2006. The Year... was approved to receive for production, and received an additional for its campaign to win the Oscar. Gullane Filmes and Caos Produções, in association with Disney's Latin American Miravista studio produced the film.
The Year... was filmed on location in Bom Retiro, with a majority of the film's cast not being professional actors. Hamburger stated that over 1,200 children auditioned for the role of Mauro before he chose Joelsas. About seventy percent of the auditions for the children's roles were held in the Jewish community, at schools and clubs.
It has also been considered a partially auto-biographical film in that Ernst Hamburger and Amélia Hamburger (pt), Cao Hamburger's parents, were both arrested during Médici's dictatorship for hiding activists.
Speaking with Comunicação & Educação, Hamburger stated that the soundtrack was incorporated as part of the narrative intentionally. In the program for the 2007 Berlinale, Hamburger is quoted as stating that his intent was to examine the mythos surrounding the 1970 Brazilian team as well as to attempt to dispel prejudices that Brazil is limited to "Indios, the jungle and the favelas." In the official script release, the introduction from Hamburger notes the process the script went through, including a year hiatus while he was working on a project with HBO. He also states that the script underwent a partial rewrite after filming had begun. In an interview in 2008, Hamburger stated that he intended to capture the concepts of both time and space in the film, a concept he attributed to inspiration from Wim Wenders.
Release The film debuted in Brazil to an audience of 70,000 on 26 September 2006. It reportedly opened to a "modest" box office. The official tabulation from the Agência Nacional do Cinema on a report for films produced from 1995 to 2011 showed a public audience count of 368,986 with a box office of .
After playing at Berlinale, The Year... was released in nearly 30 countries at film festivals, such as the 22nd Guadalajara International Film Festival, which opened with a screening of The Year....
At Cannes in 2006, RB Cinema 1 announced it would invest in three films from Latin America, including The Year..., covering nine percent of equity. The firm then took charge of selling distribution rights, such as to Vértigo Films in Spain and to Indie Circle, which covered France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
City Lights Pictures obtained the distribution rights for the film in the United States in July 2007. It played at various theaters in the U.S. throughout January and February 2008. The official theater release date for the United States was 15 February 2008. In its first two weekends, the film played on 22 screens and earned a total of . According to The Numbers, the film grossed with 22 weeks in theaters.
Worldwide, the film grossed .
The Year... was released on DVD in the U.S. on 15 July 2008, with distribution through City Lights Home Entertainment.
Reception Critical response Reception for the film was mixed, though Brazilian reviewers tended to be more positive. Critics from publications in the United States tended to be the most negative in their appraisal of the film.
Brazil Marcelo Hessel, writing for Omelete, mentioned that the press release for The Year... did note inspiration from Kamchatka as well as directors Steven Spielberg and Sergio Leone. Hessel praised Hamburger for contrasting the innocence of childhood with the insecurity inherent in periods of political unrest without verbalizing it. Eduardo Valente, writing for Revista Cinética, praised the film for its handling of the social and political turmoil of 1970s Brazil without being heavy-handed in its execution, focusing on the characters rather than the environment. Valente made a point of noting that the political characters, Mauro's parents, only appear at the beginning and end of the film, which Valente said strengthened the coming-of-age narrative. Wander Cabral, reviewing for Cineplayers, rated the film eight out of ten stars, also pointing out that the film's focus is on Mauro's reactions to the turmoil - how it affects his childhood and innocence - rather than on the political turmoil that is a frequent setting in Brazilian historical films. Cabral also praises the technical aspects of the film, specifically mentioning the cinematography and music, and how they are utilized to express Mauro's emotions. Though Cabral did mention that the film could have been more melodramatic and emotional, he felt that such trappings weren't its purpose.
Ailton Monteiro, writing for ScoreTrack, gave the film four out of four stars and mentioned how Hamburger captured the mixed feelings that come with winning the World Cup among the political discord that permeated Brazil in 1970. Marcelo Sobrinho for Plano Crítico points out that the film doesn't spend time in either debauchery or denouncing the regime; rather it is focused on Brazil's melancholy. Sobrinho praises Goldman's cinematography for visually capturing that emotion. Yara Fernandes, writing for Opinião Socialista, stated that while showing the perils of a dictatorship and political turmoil in Latin America from a child's perspective wasn't a new concept, contrasting that familiar narrative with the atmosphere in Brazil surrounding the 1970 World Cup created "a great national film" that also explained how Médici's regime exploited the Brazilian love of football as a cover for repression.
Thomas Boeira, writing for Papo de Cinema (pt), stated the choice to view the political turmoil of 1970 from a child's perspective is what made the film so interesting. Boeira does, however, note that there are some issues within the film, such as Schlomo and Mauro's relationship development, which he calls "predictable", and moments which he stated at times felt more like watching a serial's narrative. Luiz Joaquim of Cinema Escrito praised the film for its "simple (but not simplistic) narrative", as well as saying that the film cemented Hamburger's reputation as a director. Joaquim's review emphasized that the human element in the film set it apart from other contemporary Latin American productions that sought to use the same perspective of a child's naiveté as a lens. Rubens Ewald Filho, writing for Universo Online when the film was released on DVD, pointed out that while the film does depict the story of an outsider forced into a new culture, it neither relies on the sentimentality of acceptance into that new environment nor does it make light of the cultural dissonance Mauro experiences.
Roberta Pennafort, writing for Veja, found the film to be "weak" and stated that it was made for children rather than adults. In a harsh criticism against the selection panel, Pennafort stated that they chose a film more likely to succeed in the Oscars than to represent Brazil and its culture. Pennafort commented that the decision to choose The Year... as the submission for the 2007 Academy Awards indicated that the jury was making the statement that Brazilian culture shouldn't be treated as "adult", going on to state that perhaps audiences should expect to be treated as infants when consuming Brazilian media. Pennafort also stated that the film is very much like Hamburger's television show Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum with very little change and that the film was reminiscent of Disney's Bambi.
Canada