The Father’s Shadow

The death of the mother throws a wrench into the life of a Brazilian family. While the father Jorge goes on about his day to day in an almost catatonic state, little Dalva delves deep into voodoo magic in the hope that it can help her fix everything that was broken. Gabriela Amaral Almeida once again shows the exceptional talent of young Brazilian cinema with her second feature film: The Father’s Shadow is a realistically grounded family disintegration contorted with pain, yet at the same time a massively sinister fantasy of making wishes come true, spiritually connected to Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary, of which Dalva watches the first cinematographic adaptation on television.