Xavier Baert
Xavier Baert is a filmmaker and writer. Coming from experimental cinema, since 1999 he has made numerous performance films on the materiality of film and video.
He is notably the author of São Paulo , (La Ronde de nuit, 2023), an urban poem in which one could already hear the clamor of the streets for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, an essential step in the accession of the far right to power in Brazil.
Contrechants, atlas , the film version of (R)EXISTIR , was presented at the Cinémathèque française in January 2023, less than 10 days after the attempted coup of January 8.
He won the AlterPublishing 2025 Prize for (R)EXISTIR:
Xavier Baert - (R)Existir: Chronicle of São Paulo and Brazil (2021-2
(R)EXIST: CHRONICLE OF SÃO PAULO AND BRAZIL UNDER THE FAR RIGHT (2021-2023)
Brazil, February 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 epidemic:
Jair Bolsonaro has been president of Brazil for two years; Lula, released from prison but still deprived of his political rights, cannot run in the presidential elections which will take place a year and a half later.
(R)EXIST: Chronicle of São Paulo and Brazil under the far right describes two crucial years in contemporary history: they end in January 2023, with the beginning of Lula's presidency, finally re-elected for a third term, and the attempted coup of January 8 in Brasília, a Brazilian reflection of the attack on the Capitol in Washington by Bolsonarist militants.
Written and photographed from the streets of São Paulo with a mobile phone, (R)EXISTIR brings together current political events and daily life, death and resistance, despair and the joy of living.
At the heart of this documentary account lies language, and the examination of strategies that aim to disconnect it from reality. "Words don't kill," Jair Bolsonaro justified himself during the Covid-19 pandemic. (R)EXISTIR: a chronicle of São Paulo and Brazil under the far right, looks at and listens to those who resist these rhetoric of death.