Pictures of Ghosts

11/7/25

Pictures of Ghosts

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho (2023)

From acclaimed director Kleber Mendonça Filho (The Secret Agent), Pictures of Ghosts is a layered journey through time, sound, architecture, and cinema, set against the backdrop of Recife, the coastal capital of Pernambuco, and Mendonça Filho’s home town. The film explores this historical and human landscape through the city’s great movie theaters—once vibrant spaces of community and imagination throughout the 20th century. These venues, which carried both dreams and progress, also reflected profound transformations in social life. Blending archival documentary, mystery, film excerpts, and personal recollections, Pictures of Ghosts becomes both a cinematic map of a city and a meditation on how film itself shapes our sense of place and memory.

Courtesy of Grasshopper Film