For members at the Explore category and above, tickets will become available two weeks before the screening date, starting at 10:30 a.m. Additional tickets will be available to members and the general public one week before the screening date, also at 10:30 a.m. Please note that space is extremely limited and tickets will be in high demand.
Property. 2023. Brazil. Written and directed by Daniel Bandeira. With Carlos Amorim, Anderson Cleber, Zuleika Ferreira. DCP. Courtesy Dark Star Pictures. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 101 min.
At a moment when supernatural themes dominate the genre, Brazilian director Daniel Bandeira’s socially motivated folk horror film is exceptional. Described as “a story about division and incommunicability,” Property ’s escalating terror is rooted in real-world inequity and dysfunction, as a community of exploited migrant farmworkers revolts against a family of wealthy landowners. Trapping herself in the family’s armored smart car, the wife sets the stage for a battle between the classes that evokes such genre-defining tropes as confinement, body horror, premature burial, and the “final girl,” along with subtle allusions to classics like Frankenstein (1931) and The Wicker Man (1973). Best Picture winner at the 2023 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, Property joins previous Contenders selections like Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona (2019) and Remi Weekes’s His House (2020) in using horror conventions to uncover frightening societal truths. What’s haunting about the terror in Property is its sheer plausibility.