The debut film by Eduardo Nunes, who spent the past decade raising the money to make the movie, Southwest is one of the most distinctive Brazilian features of the past year. The film won the Special Jury Prize, the Best Cinematography Prize, and the International Federation of Film Critics's FIPRESCI Prize at the 2011 Rio de Janeiro Film Festival. Creating a dreamlike atmosphere through rich black-and-white photography, an extremely wide aspect ratio, and entrancing long takes, Southwest tells a folktale-like story about a woman whose entire life seems to pass in one day. The title indicates the otherworldly setting of the film because the southwest of Brazil doesn't exist. The mythical realm exists in a space somewhere between the Hungarian films of Béla Tarr and the novels of the Brontë sisters. (127 mins., 35mm)