Cristovam is a black elderly man who emigrated from Goiás countryside to a Austrian community in southern Brazil in search of a better life. One day, he finds, in an abandoned house, a series of objects from his native region. Stricken by memories of the past, he is driven crazy to the point of becoming an animal. Cornered, he will have to make use of extreme violence in order to stand up to an ultraconservative group. “Memory House”, João Paulo Miranda Maria’s first feature film, could also be titled A House Called Brazil, given that, similar to his previous short films, all shown at Curtas, the filmmaker proceeds with a reflection on his home country’s society, history and culture. During the dictatorship years, Glauber Rocha used allegory to talk about Brazil’s problems at the time, especially corruption and the structural conservatism of a colonized and developing country. João Paulo Miranda Maria also resorts to allegory in order to explore themes such as prejudice and intolerance, both central and recurrent in the stories filmed by the São Paulo director, combining a realist approach, a certain mystical sensibility and an overwhelming longing for fiction. (PC)