King Car

Teenager Ninho is uncertain whether to join the family’s taxi business, preferring instead to support Brazil’s ecological preservation. When his forgotten ability to speak to cars returns, he discovers a government plan to ban old vehicles from the roads. With help from his uncle, an eccentric mechanic, they turn old wrecks into new sleek, sentient ‘King Cars’ that attract a group of cult-like followers, but as events spiral out of control Ninho begins to question the motives of the cars. King Car tackles broad subjects including social injustice, populism, political corruption, corporate greed and climate threat.

‘The project was very long in development. It started being written 7 years ago, so somehow the time it took us to complete the filming made the project mature, and also gave us the opportunity to introduce the political context that was happening in Brazil. So this fantastic genre of the film, which I consider as a fable, has to do with the broad possibility of building metaphors from reality, without necessarily being literal or didactic. So we managed to create a parallel universe, where we put a political context with very rich characters, a beautiful plot and a beautiful story, where I feel very comfortable. Because I like to reinvent reality.’

Director Renata Pinheiro, from and interview with IFFR 2021.