Opening Night

Upon release from a juvenile detention center, 18-year-old Wellington (Baby) finds himself alone and adrift on the streets of São Paulo. Clueless about his parents’ whereabouts and lacking the resources to rebuild his life, he refuses to sleep at a shelter, and ends up on the streets. His friends from the Centro have no idea about his detention. At a cruising cinema, he meets Ronaldo, a 42-year-old man, who teaches him new ways of surviving, namely alongside him on sex work and drug trafficking. Gradually, they fall for each other. Following his feature length debut, in 2017, with Corpo Elétrico, screened at Queer Lisboa, Brazilian filmmaker Marcelo Caetano is back in Lisbon to open the festival with his second feature, Baby. Selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week in 2024, where Ricardo Teodoro (Ronaldo) won the award for Best New Actor, Baby is a sexy and vibrant plunge in São Paulo’s underworld, while it embroiders a very delicate and empathic narrative on love, family, and loss. J.F.