Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival

DIRECTOR: Amir Escandari | Finland / Denmark / Sweden | 2014 | 93min

Cripta Djan is the leader of The Strongest Ones, one of Sao Paulo’s Pixadore Crews: graffiti ‘vandals’ who free-climb buildings, the higher the better, to tag their names – all life’s given them for free. Djan is the revolutionary, while his crew of William, Biscoito and Ricardo train-surf and graft by day, and paint by night. But, what happens when the pixadores are co-opted into the establishment? Travelling to Berlin on a cultural exchange, they fling themselves hilariously and tragically into a debate that echoes all the way to South Africa, where public space isn’t for the public, art is for the élite and true freedom is hard to come by. Strikingly filmed in black and white, Pixadores is a turned-on, tuned-in youthful force of the now.