Films to Postpone the End of the World. Tropic Dystopias and the (Re)Invention of the Future p2p

“Films to Postpone the End of the World” is a public screening series that invites the audience to watch and discuss a selection of Brazilian films in the summer semester 2026.

Based on Brazilian films that engage with dystopian imaginaries or propose inspiring alternatives for navigating today’s global collapse, this series displaces the end of the world and notions of the future to the South tropics of the world. It creates a space for collectively, creatively, and critically experiencing cinema, inviting the audience to reflect on ways of reinventing the future and on forms of disrupting singular accounts of its end. Within this selection, certain degrees of negativity are acknowledged and embraced, since ending something might imply the beginning of something else.

The series borrows its name from the writings of Ideas to Postpone the End of the World (2020), an essay by the Brazilian philosopher and indigenous thinker Ailton Krenak.

In the essay, Krenak (2020) remarks that what is often described as the “end of the world” is not a future event, but a process that began centuries ago with colonialism, which led, among other violences, to the extermination of numerous Indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, in his writings, the author sharply observes that the modern notion of humankind still reproduces not only segregation but also the continuous and accelerated destruction of the planet under an extractivist logic. This logic systematically perpetuates the exclusion of certain beings — human and non-human — from the logics of humanity.

Analogous to Krenak, Eduardo Viveiro de Castro and Deborah Danowski, contemporary Brazilian philosophers, came to a similar conclusion in The Ends of the World (2016). Studying from the Maya calendar to the science fiction films present in pop culture, the authors investigate the narratives of the end of humanity and highlight an unequal distribution of ideas of the future (and those who have the right to dream about it). Although these finitude narratives are not a novelty, their multiplication and accelerated diffusion points to a cultural tendency that emerges at the heart of the Anthropocene, and its industrial capitalist societies. Not coincidentally, a common aspect in apocalyptic and dystopian narratives is the environmental collapse and the extinction of human life.

Krenak (2020) cautiously warns that there is a certain perversity in announcing the end of the world, because these discourses create a lack of alternatives to the world we inhabit now. It is to say, the present world and the present moment. Nevertheless, the author proposes to go beyond these apocalyptic accounts of finitude and to think about alternatives. One of these alternatives relies on creating spaces to tell stories – in the plural and as a collective exercise – as ways of overcoming the single narratives about the world. Moreover, as the author points out, for his indigenous cosmology dreaming is a method of resistance (Krenak, 2016).

Based on Krenak’s thoughts, this series was organized under the idea that, par excellence, cinema – and overall fiction – is the place to animate dreams, alternative realities, and to tell a multiplicity of stories. Therefore, this series aims to broaden the audiovisual repertoire of the audience screening Brazilian audiovisual perspectives to discuss narratives about “the end of the world” and the future(s) to come. This film selection intersects queer perspectives, the care and love within communities, the uprising against colonial dynamics, and, from time to time, uniting these strategies to some doses of dystopia.

Krenak, A. (2020). Ideas to postpone the end of the world. House of Anansi.

Kopenawa, D., & Albert, B. (2023). The falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. Harvard University Press.

Danowski, D., & De Castro, E. V. (2016). The ends of the world. John Wiley & Sons.

Thursday, May 21, 2026, 8pm

Screening and short film installation

The Blue Trail (O último azul). Dir. Gabriel Mascaro (2024)
Brazil / Mexico / Chile / Netherlands 2025. Original language: Portuguese. Subtitles: German. 86 minutes.

Tereza, 77, has lived her whole life in a small, industrialized town in the Amazon, until one day she receives an official government order to relocate to a senior housing colony. The colony is an isolated area where the elderly are brought to “enjoy” their final years, freeing the younger generation to focus fully on productivity and growth. Tereza refuses to accept this imposed fate. Instead, she embarks on a transformative journey through the rivers and tributaries of the Amazon to fulfil one last wish before her freedom is taken away – a decision that will change her destiny forever. (Source: Berlinale, 2025)

The first screening is done in collaboration with Uni-Kino Leuphana: Theresa Born, Jennis Bull, Lennart von der Ohe, Felix Wieland, Ava Rübenstrunk, Anna Kamsties, Kyle Wendt, Ambar Lopez Meibohm.

Thursday, June 04, 2026, 8pm

Screening

Mars One (Marte Um). Dir. Gabriel Martins (2022)
Brazil. Original language: Portuguese. Subtitles: English. 115 minutes.

The Martins family are optimistic dreamers, quietly leading their lives in the margins of a major Brazilian city following the disappointing inauguration of a far-right extremist president. A lower-middle-class Black family, they feel the strain of their new reality as the political dust settles. Tércia, the mother, reinterprets her world after an unexpected encounter leaves her wondering if she’s cursed. Her husband, Wellington, puts all of his hopes into the soccer career of their son, Deivinho, who reluctantly follows his father’s ambitions despite secretly aspiring to study astrophysics and colonize Mars. Meanwhile, their older daughter, Eunice, falls in love with a free-spirited young woman and ponders whether it’s time to leave home. (Source: Magnify)

Thursday, June 18, 2026, 8pm

Screening and sound installation

Bacurau. Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho (2019)
Brazil / France. Original language: Portuguese. Subtitles: English. 132 minutes.

Bacurau is a rural settlement in Brazil. After the matriarch’s death, strange things begin to happen: the water supply is cut off, and the village disappears from the map. The community must face an unknown, brutal enemy. The fight for survival begins! (Source: Mubi)

This screening series is part of the Kunstraum.p2p format and organized by Jana Paim Costa. The admission to all events is free.