A young woman leads a vigilante girl gang enforcing Christian standards in Brazil.
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Mariana and her friends broadcast their spiritual devotion through pastel pinks and catchy evangelical songs about purity and perfection, but underneath it all they harbor a deep rage. By day they hide behind their manicured facade, and by night they form a masked, vigilante girl gang, prowling the streets in search of sinners who have deviated from the rightful path. After an attack goes wrong, leaving Mari scarred and unemployed, her views of community, religion, and her peers begin to shift. Nightmares of repressed desires and haunting visions of alluring temptation become undeniable and the urge to scream and release her paralyzing inner demons is more powerful than ever before. A neon-tinged genre-bender that gives provocative form to the overwhelming feminine fury coursing through modern life, MEDUSA dares us not to look away.
"The Brazilian movie that won the 2021 San Sebastián International Film Festival, 'Medusa' is a film that reflects with poetry, cruelty and accuracy about the dark times that Brazil experienced in the late 2010s and early 2020s. The story ultimately reflects on the Christian influence on Brazilian society by following Mariana's journey, a young woman who does whatever it takes to stay within the standards of that Christian society - even forcing other people to adhere to those standards, enforcing them with a kind of gang reminiscent of 'A Clockwork Orange'. With touches of horror, filmmaker Anita Rocha da Silveira looks with concern at this religious influence in Brazil, but always pointing out how it ends up being an artificial construction that affects everyone."