The Year My Parents Went On Vacation	by George Sax

When young Mauro’s parents hurriedly and mysteriously deposit him outside his grandfather’s Sao Paulo, Brazil apartment in 1970, they tell him they’ll return in time for the World Cup soccer matches. Mauro (Michel Joelsas), who seems to be around 10, is a soccer zealot, but this promise doesn’t really assuage his resentment and disorientation. And things quickly get worse. His grandparent turns out to be unavailable; his funeral is scheduled for that afternoon. The angry, confused lad gradually allows himself to be assisted by members of the working-class Jewish neighborhood, especially Schlomo (Germano Haiut), an elderly observant bachelor who overcomes his reluctance to take any responsibility for this sullen, disrespectful boy. The relationship between the two is conveyed in a largely unsentimentalized fashion by director Cao Hamburger. Mauro’s outlook and personality will be changed by this association and his increasing involvement with the other neighbors. He’ll also be sharply impacted by the harsher facts of 1970s Brazilian life, primarily the sometimes brutal (US-supported) military dictatorship, which is never directly referred to, but which is the major mover in Mauro’s changing circumstances. Hamburger somehow managed to work both methodically and fluidly. He presents scenes of a durable network of human interactions, while only suggesting the repression and mostly unspecified peril around it. His film has a quiet, attractively human quality, even near the end when it becomes a little less reticent about the political environment in which it takes place.

—george sax