In Bahia (Brazil), the filmmaker reflects on different modes of getting lost: in the wilderness, in madness, in the ecstasies of love making. Losing yourself, he finds, is a script for misfits, heretics, perverts. People in need of a world that is larger than the one they know. People like himself.
Mattijs van de Port
Mattijs van de Port is a visual anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam. In his films, all of them shot in Brazil, he keeps returning to realms of transgression – ecstatic religion, violence, eroticism and aesthetics – where humans face the fact that the world does not necessarily comply with their narrations of it. His filmwork includes Saborear Frutas Brasileiras (2013), about the joy of eating fruits and the essay films The Possibility of Spirits (2016); Knots and Holes (2018); The Body Won’t Close (2021). Where Can I Get Lost? will have its European premiere in the 2024 Ethnofest. Van de Port’s films won several awards and prizes, including the prestigious Basil Wright Film Prize in 2021 and the Excellence in Visual Anthropology Award in that same year.