Brazilian-born filmmaker Sandra Kogut made her fiction feature debut with “Mutum” (2007), a film she hoped would “blur the line” between documentary and fiction. Based on the coming of age novel “Campo Geral” (1964) by Joao Guimaraes Rosa that Kogut adapted with Ana Luiza Martins Costa, “Mutum” is set in the sertao, an isolated part of Brazil’s interior. The story’s center is ten-year-old Thiago (Thiago da Silva Mariz), a dreamer at odds with his harshly practical and increasingly violent father. The tiny village where they live was built for the film, built from the same materials as real ones; the film has no score, only the naturally-occurring sounds made by birds, animals, insects and day to day activities. The result is a film that doesn’t pretend to be a documentary, but nonetheless feels intensely real. (Brazil-France, Sandra Kogut, 2007, 92 min)
