“A unique and challenging work that both entices and bewilders in equal measure.”

Memory is a curious concept – it can preserve the most trivial fragments of life, while quietly distorting other moments that we didn’t realise defined us. It tends to drift between the banal and the monumental, between half-forgotten conversations and seismic events, all of which are treated with equal indifference. This is a subject that Janaína Marques uses as the foundation for I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival (Fiz um Foguete Imaginando Que Você Vinha), her unconventional but engrossing feature directorial debut. We are introduced to Rosa, who is about to undergo a medical examination. She is told to think about “a happy memory”, which kickstarts a fascinating existential voyage into the past, taking the form of a road trip she took with her now-deceased mother Dalva, the two women moving through the arid but beautiful northern territory of their native Brazil. Over a short period of time the two women encounter a range of characters, which unlocks distant memories for Rosa, who is forced to confront these events in an effort to understand what they represent. An unconventional work designed to communicate themes that are very familiar but still worth exploring, the film challenges the boundaries of both narrative and tonal structure, covertly becoming a disquieting journey into the past. An incredibly audacious introduction to a director who clearly possesses gifts as both a storyteller and visual stylist, the film captures something that will resonate widely, while also presenting a unique depiction of grief and the journey towards healing.

Midway through the film, a minor character performs a brief rendition of “Casinha Pequenina”, a folk song by the iconic Silvio Caldas, in which there is emphasis on the line “que coitado que saudade já morreu”, which the film translates as “it is gone, nostalgia is dead”. While a perfect translation is not possible, particularly of the term “saudade” (which does not have a clear English equivalent), it does reflect a somewhat universal concept. Throughout the film, the director posits that there are many different kinds of yearning – we usually find it relating to people and places, but it’s entirely possible to feel longing to return to a particular time. This is where the director chooses to focus most of the conversation in I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival, which is most appropriately described as an existential voyage into a past that may not have ever existed, yet still feels so visceral and real. There are several layers to how Marques sets out to explore this, which ultimately entails covering different subjects, often simultaneously. The foundation of the film is a story of a daughter processing the death of her mother – but rather than taking the usual route of exploring grief in the direct aftermath of a loss, the director explores a different kind of mourning, a slower and more painful one that quietly unravels over the years, taking the form of a dull ache more than the sharp pain that can often be far more uncomfortable and difficult to process. This is then used to explore some wider themes – it presents a very different portrait of contemporary Brazil, situated somewhere in between the past and the present; a liminal space that feels somewhat uncanny, while still having a kind of comfort that aids Marques’ efforts to unspool this journey into an eerie and mysterious version of our shared past.

Based on the concept, it’s clear that I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival explores themes that are not easily communicated through conventional means. Marques leans into the abstract nature of the narrative in an effort to create what is essentially a philosophical journey into the mind of someone reflecting on the past, and therefore requires the execution to match the abstract nature of the themes. The director uses magical realism as the starting point for this film, rather than the primary propellant, resisting the idea that this method of storytelling is simply restricted to off-kilter peculiarities, and instead using it as a foundation from which she can reflect on certain psychological curiosities. The subject takes a stream of consciousness approach, told in a series of episodic moments that may appear disjointed and difficult to penetrate at first, but exist to imitate the nature of memory. Marques posits it is not a coherent, steady flow, but rather a series of scattered fragments that do not always seem consistent. Through this, the director displays her fervent refusal to conform to any traditional narrative structure, choosing to allow the film to develop its own bespoke logic, shrouding itself in a dreamlike atmosphere in which the story can unfold at a unique pace, and reflecting the key existential components without becoming too heavy-handed in its delivery of these ideas. Credit must go to both Verônica Cavalcanti and Luciana Souza, the actors who manage to slightly puncture the seemingly impenetrable layers of the film by creating a tender, moving mother-daughter dynamic that adds the necessary emotional heft to a story that is intentionally challenging to understand.

The precise message that Marques sets out to examine in I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival is not entirely clear and is instead left to the viewer’s individual interpretation. We can still see the deeper meaning that lingers beneath the surface, and it’s up to us to assert our own understanding of what is a more universal subject than we may initially realise. The film presents a world where hotdog-shaped boats flow down a river, or where children believe their rocket ships made of cardboard will burst through the roof of their suburban homes, and a range of other peculiarities – and whether we want to view this as a statement on the folly of existence or as beautiful confirmation of the absurdity of reality, or perhaps something much deeper and entirely incomprehensible, all depends on our own interpretation. The memories that enter our minds do not always make sense, and the act of recalling the past in its various forms remains mystifying – and yet, we still yearn to understand the intricacies of our minds. As a result, I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival is a film that intentionally defies categorisation, oscillating between sweetly funny, intellectually rigorous and deeply unnerving, dwelling in both joy and sadness as we follow Rosa’s existential journey through a past that may not have even existed, yet still brings her comfort. The film proposes many complex questions on the nature of humanity and the philosophical quandaries that have perplexed us since we gained consciousness, and is ultimately quite transparent in stating that it doesn’t have the answers, instead embracing the unknown as part of its structure. A metaphysical journey into the past through psychological fractures and the inability to satisfy the nostalgia we feel for the past, the film is a unique and challenging work that both entices and bewilders in equal measure.