Text: Alex King
Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling favelas are rarely associated with surfing. Media coverage of the shantytown communities that cover the hillsides of Brazil’s second city portrays a single narrative of drugs, violence and poverty. Too often cinema sells a glamourised image of Rio’s drug violence in films such as City of God or Elite Squad.
However, when Brazilian writer/producer Vince Medeiros came to speak at Warwick, he explained the motive for Rio Breaks was different. It came from “a desire to understand that part of the world a bit better, a part of the world that’s ridden with negative stereotypes and stigma.”
The filmmakers discovered “multiple, cool, life affirming narratives” in Rio’s Cantagalo favela. But the film sheds light on just one of these stories, the fortunes of the Favela Surf Club. This “incredibly cool, but also massively underfunded NGO” offers free surf lessons and coaching to help local kids escape Rio’s pervasive drug violence.
In the seven years that Medeiros and director Justin Mitchell spent making the film they won a level of trust from the community that allowed them to create a deep and honest film.
Rio Breaks’ politics are not overt, Brazil’s social problems appear reflected through the lives of its two stars, Fabio, 13, and Naama, 12. Over two years the film follows the boys’ progression as surfers under the instruction of the surf club. Compellingly, it maps the ups and downs of their friendship as they struggle to grow up in an environment where violence is always close.
Both boys live in an area of Cantagalo nicknamed Vietnam because of its regular shootouts between the Commando Vermelho and the police.
Naama’s older brother was killed by police after becoming involved with the traffickers and Fabio lost his father, who was killed by his own gang for attempting to leave. Fabio’s struggle to come to terms with his father’s death and the efforts of the community to keep him out of trouble provide the dramatic centre of the film.
Aproador beach emerges as the film’s silent main character. Stunning photography and beautiful time-lapse sequences portray the beach as island of peace among Rio’s chaos, but also a vibrant, democratic space. The beach is a social melting pot, one of the few places in Rio that allow those from the concrete and those from the hills to mix. As the beach’s inhabitants relate their personal stories of violence and loss, conflict is revealed to be never far from the surface.
For Fabio and Naama the beach provides an important escape from the pressures of life on the hill. But can surfing change lives? Medeiros tries not to overstate the impact of surfing, but the Favela Surf Club’s role in the community was considerable.
Since filming ended Picachu has, with the support of the club, competed at higher and higher levels. He is tipped to emulate the success of Simão Romão, the most internationally well-known pro surfer to have come from Brazil’s favelas.
However, the transforming power of cinema may be greater than that of sport. The film caught the attention of Luciano Huck, one of the most popular TV presenters in Brazil. His show, a Brazilian institution watched by 12 million people, granted Naama his dream of going to Hawaii to surf with Kelly Slater. The show also paid for a total refurbishment of the club’s facilities. After being run on a shoestring for years the club now has a screening room, dressing room and the capability of shaping boards from scratch.
But the economic transformation of Brazil has brought about an even more dramatic change than either cinema or surfing ever could. Thirty million people have been lifted out of poverty in the last five years and the social changes this has brought have been huge.
Since filming ended, Cantagalo is one of the hundreds of favelas where the government’s enormous pacification campaign has freed entire neighbourhoods from the grip of drug trafficking and its related violence.
Would it be possible to make the same Rio Breaks today, just two years after shooting finished? Vince answered “the favela is the product of 500 years of mismanagement and slavery, so it’s not going to change over night but the signs are promising.”
With luck, as Brazil slowly frees itself from the grip of poverty and violence, Rio Breaks’ tale of struggle and hardship will be an ever less common narrative.
Alex King
If you would like to make a donation to the Rio Breaks Foundation and help support the Favela Surf Club visit: bit.ly/RBfoundation
Rio Breaks is out now on DVD
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