Bermuda International Film Festival 2009

If you were a ten-year-old boy in 1970 Brazil, you had one thing on your mind: The Brazilian soccer team playing in the World Cup. But for young Mauro (Michel Joelsas), his excitement for Pelé is overshadowed by his parents' departure. In that historic year, the Brazilian population wasn't just united by one of the greatest soccer teams ever assembled. It was also dealing with increasingly aggressive activity by a dictatorship eager to arrest any non-conformists. So while Mauro collects national team trading cards and plays out matches with his tabletop soccer game, his parents rush him from their home, explaining the couple needs to "go on vacation. In telling the story from Mauro's eyes, director Cao Hamburger doesn't offer names, faces, or specifics. Mauro's parents just drop him off at his grandfather's apartment and head for the hills. Only one problem: Unknown to the family, Grandpa died earlier in the day. Our young hero is forced to make his own way and contend with Shlomo (Germano Haiut), the grandfather's crusty old neighbour in a predominantly Jewish building. Mauro and Shlomo become buddies, of course, but Mauro learns much more from the diverse world that surrounds him. He teams up with a few kids (led by Daniela Piepszyk) to play soccer, gawk at women in a dressing room, and meet the people in the community. Italians, Jews, and Blacks make up Mauro's new landscape, filling in the slots of his life like those soccer cards filling up his collection book. Hamburger's coming-of-age story breathes within this larger mosaic of race, ethnicity, religion, and politics, and many of the film's memorable scenes have those issues at centre