The Brazilian sertão as post-national landscape in the work of Marcelo Gomes

This article takes as its main focus Marcelo Gomes’s 2005 Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures and examines the extent to which, through Gomes’ work, we can identify the emergence of a new, ‘post-national’ cinema in Brazil. Such post-national film-making represents a move beyond concerns for the need to represent in an authentic fashion the nation on screen and discussions of national identity, more broadly speaking, that have marked Brazilian cinema for decades, and particularly in relation to the representation of the sertão or Brazilian backlands as a site of ‘cultural purity’. Instead, it opens up the possibility of reading Brazilian films in a much wider framework such as that of World Cinema.