The 2024 Pop Up Residency Selects ‘The Funeral,’ the Third Feature From Brazilian helmer Carolina Markowicz (EXCLUSIVE)

Holly Jones
·4 min read
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Brazilian auteur Carolina Markowicz will head to Bucharest to hone her third feature, “The Funeral.” In development, the film was selected for the 2024 Pop Up Residency, pairing Markowicz with multi-prized Romanian producer Ada Solomon for a three-week consultancy.

“It’s truly a privilege to be able to dialogue with an industry professional like Ada, a producer who has made some films I truly admire. Daring, original and different. I love the artists who still dare to take risks, this is so rare nowadays. I’m looking forward to hearing her take on my film, and very honored to have it selected by her,” Markowicz told Variety.

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The residency is part of an exclusive development initiative from Projeto Paradiso, which additionally awarded Markowicz a Paradiso Scholarship this year to attend the TFL ScriptLab for the budding concept. It’s the fifth consecutive year that the partner program has offered the residency to a Brazilian filmmaker.

“Carolina’s project has incredible artistic potential and this immersion will be very important to bring complementary and enriching visions to this film. We created this Pop Up partnership with the aim of offering customized, high-level mentoring in an immersive environment, something that allows the screenwriter to have dedicated, quality time to focus on the process of creating and developing the script,” said Josephine Bourgois, Executive Director of Projeto Paradiso.

The São Paulo-based Markowicz hit the festival circuit to acclaim, her first two features, “Charcoal” (“ Carvão”) and “Toll” (”Pedágio”), bowing to audiences at the Toronto Film Festival, where she was awarded the Emerging Talent award in 2023. Her short film, 2018’s “The Orphan,” (“O Órfão”), snagged a Cannes’ Queer Palm plaudit among other international accolades.

Solomon has worked on over 60 films, notably collaborating on several projects with festival favorite Radu Jude, including his recent Locarno Jury Prize Winner, “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.”

“I am extremely honored to host Carolina Markowicz and dive together with her into the universe of Brazilian high class. I find her project, ‘The Funeral,’ has the two key elements for success: Allowing the audience to discover a community that’s not easily accessible and exploring a subject matter that’s highly universal. For me ‘The Funeral’ seems to be a Brazilian ‘Succession,’” Solomon relayed.

The narrative follows a wealthy São Paulo family in mourning after the passing of their patriarch. At the funeral, a clandestine daughter from his past affair comes to shake the privileged, high-status lives they’ve grown accustomed to, calling them toward reluctant inclusion.

“The truth is, I’m interested in peoples’ complexities and I believe my films will always somehow speak about relations and the shadows that are inherent to our society. Families are a reflection of that. They offer the intimacy that allows us to show the light and the worst part of us. It’s really paradoxical that families are one of the most romanticized institutions in our society,” Markowicz relayed.

Speaking to her experience with the Torino Script Lab, she recounts, “the process so far has been so rich and inspiring,” before adding that, “The development stage is the ideal stage to understand what the film is telling you, what it needs to be and for yourself, to understand what you want to talk about, what made you fall in love with that idea.”

“For me, films are a living organism that communicate with their authors – from the development stage until editing, or even the launching. They sometimes ask for things that you haven’t thought of. I think this process of hearing input can be really interesting,” she concluded.

The brainchild of Matthieu Darras, former programmer of Cannes Critics’ Week, the Pop Up Film Residency focuses on creatives working toward their second or third feature films. Alongside international labs, festivals and markets, the residency is carried out in more than 10 countries and offered to a Brazilian filmmaker via Projeto Paradiso.

Former projects selected for the program include “My Name Is Baghdad” helmer Caru Alves de Souza’s in-development title “Lonely Hearts,” Daniel Bandeira’s “Red Express,” Esmir Filho’s “Undetectable” and Beatriz Seigner title “While They Sleep.”

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