Gabriel ea montanha (2017)

Directed by: Fellipe Barbosa | 130 minutes | drama | Actors: Joao Pedro Zappa, Caroline Abras, Alex Alembe, Rashidi Athuman, John Goodluck, Luke Mpata, Manuela Picq, Rhosinah Sekeleti, Leonard Siampala

In July 2009, Brazilian backpacker Gabriel Buchmann disappeared while climbing to the top of Mount Mulanje in Malawi. Not long after, he was found dead. In ‘Gabriel ea Montanha’ (‘Gabriel and the Mountain’), director Fellipe Gamarano Barbosa films the journey of Gabriel, whom he knew personally. The result is a hyper-realistic and intimate reconstruction of Gabriel’s last months, in which he travels through Africa and befriends many people who crossed his path.

Protagonist João Pedro Zappa portrays Gabriel as he has been described by Barbosa: an extroverted jock who easily makes contact with others. This can be seen in the various scenes where Gabriel immerses himself in the local culture and befriends the people he encounters on his journey. To make it even more authentic, Barbosa looked up the people involved and cast them as herself in the film. The improvised conversations therefore feel very natural, which gives the film a docudrama-like atmosphere.

However, it all remains somewhat on the surface – what exactly is Gabriel’s motivation is unclear. In political discussions with his girlfriend, he seems a lot less idealistic than she is, while she sneers at his ‘neo-conservative friends’. On the other hand, this ambiguity may be exactly the point: Gabriel is a young twenty-something who doesn’t know what he wants in life and the sole purpose of his journey is to find out. ‘Gabriel ea Montanha’ is a reconstruction of that journey, to which the viewer can draw conclusions.

With the superficiality of the contacts that Gabriel makes, Barbosa also seems to want to say something about modern backpack tourism. That seems a lot more authentic and focused on the local culture than packing a hotel en masse and visiting tourist locations, but has the same superficiality. Although Gabriel emphasizes that he is a Brazilian and not a European or American, he remains a ‘Mzungu’, the white man who comes to take a look at Africa and then goes home.

All in all, ‘Gabriel ea Montanha’ is an authentic portrait of a young man in search of meaning in the wide world. The intimate knowledge that Barbosa and various opponents have of Gabriel make it a very personal story. The film does occasionally become so documentary-like that the question arises whether this form might have done the story better.