Brazilian actors Maeve Jinkings, Bárbara Colen and Márcio Vito have been attached to star in "Mesopotamia," the feature debut of director Andy Malafaia, being presented this week by Druzina Content at the Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM). The casting of three acclaimed performers associated with Brazilian auteur cinema has positioned the drama-thriller as one of the market's buzzier titles, lending it both artistic and festival pedigree.

Set in rural Brazil in 1974 under the military dictatorship, the film follows a couple, Jorge and Mariângela, whose relationship is destabilised both by the threatened expropriation of their land for a hydroelectric dam and by an unexpected intimacy between Mariângela and Jorge's sister. Producer Luciana Druzina describes it as a deeply Brazilian story with international resonance, touching on forced displacement, authoritarianism, gender violence and the erasure of memory. Druzina Content previously made "Five Types of Fear," and the film is scheduled to shoot next year, primarily in the sugarcane-growing countryside of Rio de Janeiro state.