Juliana Rojas likes to blend contemporary Brazilian social critique with the surreal and supernatural, as evidenced by her queer werewolf musical (Good Manners (2018)).

With Cidade; Campo – literally city; country – she splits the film into two. The first half is Joana (Fernanda Vianna) forced to relocate from a beloved farm to São Paulo after a rural disaster. The second half is urbanite couple Flavia (Mirella Façanha) and Mara (Bruna Linzmeyer) who embark on a tree change, taking over Flavia’s father’s failing farm after he dies.

There is a point of connection between the two stories but it is slight. We are immersed in one story and then the next. It’s a bit of a mood film. Joana lives with her sister and finds a job and an ability to stand up for human rights. She is haunted by her home and farm, particularly her white horse, but finds solace in her sister’s tiny vegetable patch.

Flavia and Mara’s story seems more amorphous and leans more heavily into gentle folk horror. For Flavia, she is trying to find her place in her father’s world and an affinity with the natural world. There is ayahuasca, eerie smoke and light, a labyrinthine forest and eventually a sense of harmony.

I’m not sure of the messaging or subtext – it’s hard for women to forge a career? Women are essentially courageous in facing the demons of the past and the fears of the future unknown? For every person forced from rural to urban, there will be someone with the choice to go the other way? I’m not sure.

In the end it’s perhaps enough to succumb to the mood and to learn never to take ayahuasca.