Mi amigo Nietzsche
2012 · 15m · Brasil
Directed by Fáuston da Silva
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: dark, provocative, surreal
An unexpected encounter between Nietzsche and Lucas is the beginning of a violent revolution in his mind, in his family and in society; in the end he will no longer be a child, he will be dynamite.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A Brazilian kid gets visited by a dead German philosopher and it somehow becomes a Bildungsroman wrapped in violent surrealism—exactly the kind of premise that makes you go 'wait, how is this even a film?' and then it is, and it shouldn't work, and it does.
Da Silva situates this within a specific lineage of philosophical cinema and magical realism, though the tonal marriage between pedagogical dialogue and explosive family rupture feels deliberately unsettled rather than formally resolved.
The film's entire architecture hinges on the decision to treat Nietzsche not as metaphor but as a literal visiting body in a working-class household—a single formal commitment that forces every scene to choose between naturalism and fever dream, and that tension is what makes it breathe.