Travelling cinema of pilgrim Antonio

“Canudos is not heaven, but God lives here.”

In the Sertão, a Brazilian region known for its long-lasting droughts, one night the town of Canudos vanished under water. Once, this place had been world news as the site of a unique utopian experiment: the free town of Pilgrim Antonio. Thousands of rightless natives, runaway slaves and poor peasants had gathered to build a future based on solidarity. But the army was sent to destroy the town, and most of its inhabitants were killed.
What they left behind was a prophecy: the dry wilderness in which they lived would turn into a sea. Generations later, suddenly these words became filled with meaning.

The sea of pilgrim Antonio is a journey in search of the people and the dreams of Canudos. A search for water and drought, for hope and longing. And for the words of the pilgrim, that still resound through the interior. A portrait of a Brazilian Atlantis, filled with tough but heartwarming encounters and moving with the music and slow rhythm of life in the relentless Sertão. With a remarkable epilogue that emerges from nothing and vanishes again.

Growing up in Brazil, Mendel Hardeman has been caught by this story ever since childhood. The sea of pilgrim Antonio was made between 2007 and 2013, and recounts the story of hundred years of human life in resistance and hope, in a region where water is a question longing for answer every day again.

In 2010, Mendel Hardeman organized a “travelling cinema” tour through the region where the film was being shot, showing scenes of the work in progress. At sunset, in small isolated villages, people gathered around a white wall to see a film, for the first time in their lives.

Three years later, the film is finished and those screenings have become the source of inspiration for the travelling “Cinema of pilgrim Antonio”, that will set off on an independent crowd-hosted tour through Europe. In 2014 the film will return to Brazil, with a long series of screenings throughout the dry interior, finishing in the slums of the big cities.

Watch the trailer The sea of pilgrim Antonio

More information about the film and the travelling cinema in the Netherlands: http://www.antoniofilm.com