Levante (Power Alley)

Levante (Power Alley) (literally “Uprising”), dir. Lillah Halla, 2023 Brazil/France/Uruguay, 99 min., in Portuguese and Spanish with English subtitles 👍🏐

Tuesday, June 25, 2024, 8:30 PM, New Parkway

not available in the Digital Screening Room streaming encore

⚠️Content advisory: contains scenes of violence and public harassment, and also scenes of incidental nudity in showers and locker rooms

Levante (Power Alley)

Sofia (Ayomi Domenica, pictured, right) is the star player on her high school volleyball team in São Paulo, which is in the championship round. Sofia is in the running for a major international scholarship, but the selection hinges on that final championship game. There’s just one thing: she’s pregnant by a guy she barely knows, and abortion is illegal in Brazil. Anti-abortion zealots get word of her plans and are determined to stop her at any cost, by trickery, by blackmail, by public ostracism, and by terrorizing her home. With support from her teammates and friends, she finds a way through.

The story is a powerful one of an uprising (the Portuguese title) against unjust and unreasonable laws that deny Sofia the most basic bodily autonomy. Unfortunately, I found it a bit slow moving, even at 1.5X, with rather more scenes of the volleyball games than I needed. Of course, it was also the last film I screened for Frameline48, so my own festival fatigue was definitely a factor. Highly recommended.

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