he film shows a community that has been isolated for 150 years among the mountains of stone.
A distant place and its unknown beauty: in the Baixo Jequitinhonha region, on the border between Minas Gerais and Bahia, the giant stones have marked the path of the river for millions of years.
The natural wall isolates everything, even the passage of time. In this impressive scenario, Quilimérios still live as they did in the 19th century. For them, isolation was the only option. Even today, amidst the high and untouched stones, the mystery of its existence remains.
The story told in the region of Rubim, the closest city, is that this group of people was formed from the flight of an ex-slave, Juca Preto, hired by a farmer in the city of Pedra Azul, where he lived, to kill someone important. After committing the crime, Juca fled to that region where his descendants live today and which remains almost inaccessible.
On the run, he took an indigenous woman with him, with whom he started the Quilimérios family. They are very reserved people, who cultivate old customs and have behavioral habits such as inbreeding.
Along with the legend, the most reasonable sociological explanation is that they are remnants of the traveling quilombos - nomadic groups formed by Afro-descendants who escaped captivity, indigenous people expelled from their lands and even by whites who fled the cities for various reasons.
Quilimérios is a short film (24 minutes) that tells a little of this story and shows the stunning scenery and the almost untouched places of Baixo Jequitinhonha. It was filmed almost entirely with cell phone and drone, which makes it an experimental and innovative product.
A film by Emerson Penha, with music by Túlio Mourão, photography by Fábio Damasceno, production by Zu Moreira, edited by Rafael Diniz (Fiel) and screenplay by Tião Soares.