The cast and crew of Aquarius, an acclaimed Brazilian drama in competition at Cannes have used the film’s official premiere to mount a protest as what they see as a coup in their country.

Writer-director Kleber Mendonca Filho, along with his cast and crew, climbed the steps to the Palais in Cannes before revealing a selection of banners apparently objecting to the recent impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff.

The protest was met by ecstatic applause inside the cinema. Audience members then joined in by holding aloft similar banners.

Actors Maeve Jinking and Sonia Braga and producer Emilie Lesclaux continue their protest. Photograph: Sebastien Nogier/EPA

Aquarius is about an ageing music critic, played by Sonia Braga, eager to remain in her apartment despite developer pressure. Yet it is not an overtly political film, instead meditating on shifting familial allegiances and the way space intersects with identity.

The film was made before the current political crisis in Brazil, which has seen the country’s first female president forced from office, protesting her innocence about the crimes of which she has been accused.

In an interview with the New York Times last week, Mendonca Filho – whose own feelings about the country’s democracy are said to be “fervent” – was asked if his film was intended to reflect the country’s push for capitalist progress.

“Good films or books pick up on things in society, or in a country, but it is too early to say if this film does that before the film actually screens and people react to it,” he said. “Only then will I know. I am curious myself.”





