02 · 27 · 25

Carlos Diegues (1940-2025) and BYE BYE BRASIL

Rafael Aviña

It is with immense sadness that I learn of the death of one of the most distinguished and sensitive filmmakers of Latin America: the Brazilian Carlos Diegues (Maceió, 1940 - Rio de Janeiro, 2025). The carnival, favelas, poverty, prostitution, football, samba, and bossa nova stopped being picturesque folklore to become themes and witnesses of a predominant reality in the mid-sixties. And the fact is that the daily problems of that Brazil under military dictatorship provoked a filmic renewal and the emergence of young filmmakers who went from film clubbing and film criticism to filmmaking. Glauber Rocha, Carlos Diegues, Leon Hirzman, Joaquim Pedro De Andrade, Ruy Guerra and others, inspired by Rio, 40 Degrees (1955), a simple and fresh work directed by Nelson Pereira Dos Santos, launched the so-called cinema novo brasileiro to the world.

Since his debut with the short Escola de samba, alegria de viver (1962), Carlos “Cacá” Diegues explored, in films like Ganga Zumba, A Grande Cidade, Xica or Chuvas de Verão, the main problem of underdevelopment: subsistence, as well as the solidary chronicle of Brazilian misery, its myths and cultural roots, whose masterpiece is that metaphor as playful as it is brutal that is Bye Bye Brazil (1979), premiered in Mexico during the Muestra Internacional de Cine¹ in 1982; cited, by the way, in the documentary Pictures of Ghosts (2023), by Kleber Mendonca.

In that November 1982, I was 23 years old, halfway through my bachelor’s degree in Communication at UAM Xochimilco [Autonomous Metropolitan University campus Xochimilco], working in the Department of Film Program of Cineteca Nacional and living with my parents, who accompanied me to that show at the cinema Internacional, because in March of that year the Cineteca at Churubusco and Tlalpan was burned to the ground. When the lights turned on, I was a different person; the film left me with a strange and profound sensation of happiness and sadness that I have not forgotten. Bye Bye Brazil changed my way of understanding cinema and my social conception of the world: Diegues' film was a cheerful story in appearance, exuberant and reflective that augured a new civilization. A dream of economical, cultural and sexual prosperity that was full of optimism, dedicated to the marginalized people of Brazil in 1980; in the director's words: “the goodbye to the cangaceiros and the tropical paradise”.

Bye Bye Brazil tells the story of the physical and inner journey of the Rolidei Caravan formed by the magician Lorde Cigano (José Wilker), the sexy Salomé (Betty Faria) and the muscular black man, Andorinha, wandering artists with a very poor show, who on the back of their broken-down truck bring a little entertainment to the poorest sectors of the various Brazilian towns that don't have access to television. They are also joined by Ciço (Fabio Junior), a penniless accordion player from the Sertão region, who is obsessed with Salomé, and his pregnant wife, Dolores (Zaira Zambelli). Following the instructions of a truck driver, they try to cross the Transamazonica to reach Altamira, a sort of non-existent paradise, and Brasilia, which once stood as the land of opportunities. On their journey they observe poverty, ignorance, abuse, TV alienation, ecological devastation and the destruction of civilization, but also the hope and ingenuity of the Brazilian population, while they survive by swindling or resorting to prostitution. They find places where misery and abundance coexist, movie exhibitors who travel through the villages, Amazon Indians who try to keep their dignity, tricksters, floating factories, smugglers, corrupt government officials or social workers; a strange social fauna that framed the country at that time that was preparing for the so-called Brazilian miracle that never arrived as it happened with the rest of Latin America countries, including Mexico.

At the end of 2021, I showed Bye Bye Brazil on DVD to my son. He was so fascinated with the film that he didn’t notice that when the end credits were running and the dedication read: “To the Brazilian people of the 21st century,” I couldn’t stop crying and he hugged me tightly. I could not speak because of the emotions I felt and when I could articulate words, I explained to him that I was crying because of everything that the film generated in me and reminded me of that particular moment in my life in 1982.

My father lived and shared everything with me. I had an overflowing optimism for life and for Mexico. I was in love. I was happy at the university and imagined a promising future, not so much economically, but professionally and romantically: a partner, children, a better Mexico and a better world, more organized, more equitable and free. The reality was different, but of course, it was also full of multiple happiness moments with the arrival of my children and my writing. Re-watching the film after four decades I understood the timelessness of it, and that the concept of happiness is found in the simplest and most fleeting details, such as the moment when Lorde Cigano manages to get “snow” to fall inside his weathered tent or the way he comforts the old woman who asks about her progeny. And the fact is that Bye Bye Brazil is a universal and moving story; a vigorous filmic, social, musical and political lesson. After its exhibition in the 1982 Festival, the Cineteca screened it in its new complex located in the so-called Plaza de los Compositores and later, the businessman Carlos Amador premiered it on January 24, 1986 in his theatres Palacio Chino and Majestic, releasing it as another of the many dirty and semi-porn films he exhibited in those years.

Carlos Diegues, who has just left us, traveled with his actors and technicians more than 15,000 kilometers, crossing three of the five regions of Brazil. They endured the torrential rains that destroyed the breaches in the Amazon, or the drought of the Sertão in northeastern part of Brazil. 

As in all of his films, music plays a fundamental role, as it happens in his films: Tieta of Agreste (1996) and Orfeu (1999). Therefore, the beautiful soundtrack by Roberto Menescal and the homonymous theme song performed by Chico Buarque are an extra fascination, as is the use of Ernesto Lecuona’s Para Vigo me voy, Xavier Cugat’s Time Was, or Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, in this sensitive, raw and beautiful portrait of a reality; the same one that changed the optimism of Cacá Diegues at that time for other more bitter and realistic experiences, such as his own version of Orfeo.

Translated by Adrik Díaz

Translator's Notes

1. TN: The Muestra Internacional de Cine is a non-competitive film festival that takes place in the facilities of the Cineteca Nacional, in Mexico City. Its main purpose is to bring to the Mexican public the most innovative and recent films of the international scene, endorsed by their recognition in international festivals and by specialized critics.