Baby Dir: Marcelo Caetano | ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
After spending two years in juvenile detention for setting fire to his old school, eighteen year-old Wellington (João Pedro Mariano) emerges from incarceration as an adult, with nothing but the clothes he is wearing to the streets of São Paulo, Brazil.
After discovering that his alcoholic policeman father and his mother have left the city without a forwarding address, the homeless Wellington finds out how difficult it is to find a place to sleep, before hanging out with a group of disenfranchised young queer men who have found ways to survive.
The group take Wellington on an outing to a porn theatre for a bit of fun with the men lining the walls of the theatre waiting for sexual encounters. It is here that Wellington meets Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), a 42 year-old sex worker and drug dealer who takes him home and teaches him how to hustle.
Wellington is also known as Baby, because of his youthfulness. But Wellington also seems to float around and find people to look after him. Each encounter is a learning experience, even though he finds himself returning to Ronaldo time and time again.
The camera is very much a voyeur as Baby drifts through life with short-term goals such as finding his mother, making enough money to survive or avoiding the ever-present police brutality marginal awaiting people like him.
The film takes the audience on a journey into the queer complexities for different generations of men trying to eke out lives in the most populated city in Brazil.
Baby is just one of the films from Spain and Latin America in the 2025 Spanish Film Festival which starts on 12 June. See spanishfilmfestival.com for screenings at Luna Leederville, Luna on SX and Palace Raine Square. The festival runs until 2 July.
Lezly Herbert
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