Guaxuma
2018 · 14m · Brasil , Francia
Directed by Nara Normande
Genres: coming-of-age, experimental, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Grains of sand metamorphose to recall happy times in Guaxuma, a beach in north-eastern Brazil. Tayra and Nara grew up together and were inseparable; the sea breeze brings back every kind of memory of a very special friendship.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Okay, so it's a memory-poem about female friendship told through literal sand metamorphosis—that's genuinely weird and I respect it, but the execution is so *precious* about its own melancholy that it almost disappears into the beach aesthetic it's trying to transcend.
Normande locates herself in the tradition of essayistic cinema and structural poetry, where the image does the emotional work that dialogue won't; the editing rhythm and the grain-to-memory conceit sit in careful dialogue with experimental practice while remaining deeply felt.
The whole film hinges on the decision to let sand textures *become* the archive of memory rather than illustrate it—that single formal choice elevates what could've been sentimental into something tactile and strange.