Brazil Between Violence and the Will to Live: Favela Fashion, Grief Over Police Violence and Indigenous Resistance Ahead of the Election

National team jerseys, flip-flops and colorful clothes make up a style that, according to the narration, is going viral. It was born in Brazil's favelas, and the designer known as Abacaxi brought it to the major runways. Abacaxi calls this style the "estética de cria," the aesthetic of those who grew up in the favela.

His collections also have an explicit political goal: to reclaim the national colors, which, in his view, were appropriated by the Bolsonaro camp. The designer says he was very upset when the right appropriated Brazil's colors and flag, because, according to him, the favela was precisely who consumed that look the most. That is why he wanted to "bring the flag back."

He introduces himself as Jean, known as Abacaxi. That is where the name of his label, Piña, comes from, which is "pineapple" in Spanish. Abacaxi explains that he already imagined his brand as international, and jokes that "apple" already existed, so he had to find something else. The starting point of his work is his frustration with how favela fashion is seen: many people treat it as something vulgar, ugly, unacceptable, and he decided that this perception needed to be transformed.

The cameras follow the designer buying fabric downtown, choosing denim to put together looks and deciding to take two pieces of the same fabric to make a jumpsuit. He identifies the turning point in his career as the Bad Boy collection, after which "things started happening very fast." A boot collection came about through the singer Ludmilla: she released a music video and wanted to bring in the "Brasilcore vibe," but without writing "Brasil," and she called on Abacaxi to create the pieces.

The collection Abacaxi is working on during filming is special, he says, because it is inspired by "Gang," the clothing associated with pichação graffiti. He shows a piece to his mother and asks if it reminds her of anything; she recognizes it immediately and suggests adding a little rhinestone at the top. Abacaxi wants to take this collection, made of high-quality denim, to Ipanema, because he thinks it speaks both to the audience from the periphery and to the Zona Sul.

His mother recalls that her son always had a knack for fashion, ever since he was a child, and that he started by cutting up the curtains at home to make clothes to wear to the baile charme in Madureira. She admits she would have preferred that he had joined the army and had nothing to do with fashion.

Abacaxi's connection to these clothes goes back to his own childhood. He says his parents had "a year of ostentation" inside the favela, because his father was one of those "in the movement." That gave the family easy access to Gang clothing, pieces that required a lot of money to buy. Abacaxi says that growing up in a community is complicated, but that it is even more complicated for those who are Black, because you have to prove your worth every single day.

Backstage at a show, models explain what Piña represents to them. At other agencies and brands, they say, they are asked to be taller, thinner, to have "less butt." At Piña, they say, they find space with the Brazilian body as it is. One of them sums up the intention: to show that they are not just a body, but talent, and to "kick the door down" until everyone understands that.

Abacaxi's logic is straightforward: if the Zona Sul won't come to the favela to see their fashion, they will go down to show themselves. The documentary follows a photo shoot on the beach. The designer describes the Zona Sul as the place frequented by those with more privilege, where you need more resources to be there. Taking fashion there, he says, is like "shaking up the system a little." He states that fashion is political and that it also brings discomfort.

People's looks, he says, are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but that is normal for him by now and happens everywhere. What matters is being seen, because "to be seen is to be remembered." In his assessment, those who are bothered in the moment may later look with different eyes and start to like it. A passerby praises the looks as representative of the carioca way of being.

The workday ends, "as always," in a party. Abacaxi describes the favela baile as something deeply cultural: it is the place where everyone meets after a turbulent week of work and routine to show off their look and their beauty. What he hopes for favela aesthetics is respect and that opportunities be given to the artists within it.

The narration shifts in tone from these bailes. Parties like those of Abacaxi and his crew are very common in Brazil, but, according to the documentary, it is not unusual to see men with machine guns at them. They belong to criminal organizations that have brought the favelas under their control. The state has little presence, drug trafficking factions control access to certain neighborhoods, and kidnappings, robberies and murders are part of daily life.

To combat this, politicians and the police have used the same tactic for years, according to the narration: raids that resemble military operations and in which people die all the time. The deadliest in the country's history, according to the film, took place in October 2025. In Operation Containment, in Rio de Janeiro, police killed more than 110 people who, according to the authorities, were all criminals. Five police officers also died. UN human rights experts criticized the scale of the operations. News clips report that, according to official information, the police faced unexpectedly strong resistance, with shootouts that lasted for hours. A voice counters: "It wasn't an operation, it was a massacre."

The documentary concludes that in the favelas, police violence is as common as gang brutality, and that residents are caught in the crossfire all the time, even outside of the major operations.

The second story is told by Kathlen Romeu's mother. In 2020, her daughter graduated at 23 and turned 24 in October. The family dreamed of leaving the community, and her mother recalls that, that year, she was asking God to let her become a grandmother, because she didn't want to be a very old grandmother. She poses the question that runs through her grief: someone who loses a husband is a widow, someone who loses their parents is an orphan, but what is the name for someone who loses a child? And, in her case, a daughter murdered while pregnant.

A television report from the time states that Kathlen was hit by a stray bullet during a confrontation between police officers and drug traffickers in the Complexo do Lins, in Rio's Zona Norte. According to the police, gang members allegedly attacked the base of the Lins Pacifying Police Unit.

The mother decides to return to the Complexo do Lins, where her daughter was shot. For her, however painful it may be, it is "a calling" to continue her activism, her daughter's memory and reparation, and the closing of this cycle. She says Kathlen was missing her grandmother. Kathlen's mother-in-law got in touch and said the young woman could come, because the street was calm and there was no danger, but, as the mother says, unfortunately the mother-in-law was wrong. Even so, she thanks the mother-in-law and calls her fundamental in her life. The grandmother, who also takes part in the visit, is deeply shaken upon returning to the spot.

The account of what happened is given in the alley itself: the two were walking normally when they heard a noise. The grandmother threw herself to the ground and, seeing Kathlen also on the ground, thought she had thrown herself down to protect herself. But the young woman had been fatally shot.

The mother states that her daughter was murdered by the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro, "which has the obligation to protect people." She disputes the claim that the officers were met with gunfire, an argument that, according to her, is used every time they kill someone. In her version, the ones met with gunfire were her daughter and her grandson, and the grandmother nearly died too because she was right beside them. She criticizes the "a good criminal is a dead criminal" rhetoric, noting that the ones dying are working people.

In the apartment where Kathlen lived, her mother describes the emptiness in her heart and the physical emptiness of the place, a memory that is "sweet, but very sad." She shows the letters her daughter received and says she was very loved. Kathlen had posted her pregnancy announcement on a Thursday and was killed the following Tuesday, less than four months into the pregnancy. The family never learned the baby's sex and, symbolically, calls it Zion, had it been a boy, and Maya, had it been a girl.

For five years, the mother says, she has been seeking justice. She attributes the treatment they have received to the fact that they are "Black, poor and from the favela" and to structural racism, which means that even when they act correctly, they are always seen as being in the wrong. The three police officers involved, whom she calls her daughter's murderers, were convicted in the military justice system and sentenced to two years and 15 days, to be served at liberty. For the family, this was "another rifle shot." The conviction was for procedural fraud, that is, for tampering with the crime scene: according to the mother, the officers planted magazines and ammunition to try to fabricate the scene. Her reasoning is that no one tampers with a crime scene unless they are guilty.

The family sums up the situation in one sentence: "the police kill and the judiciary buries." The fight now, they explain, is to keep the crime from happening again, since full justice will never come and Kathlen will never come back. Their wish is for her name to be immortalized, because "only those who are not remembered truly die."

The third story is that of a photographer from the Tupinambá people, born in Parintins, in Amazonas, who now lives in São Paulo, the "great concrete forest." She recalls that the Brazilian flag reads "order and progress" and asks what progress is. Looking at a city like São Paulo, she says, progress means removing a tree and putting up a building. Indigenous thinking, she says, is the complete opposite.

She points out that São Paulo has always been Indigenous territory and that its Indigenous name, Piratininga, means "dried fish." In this concrete jungle, she says, she makes the camera her arrow: when she raises the camera and clicks, it is as if she were raising a bow and shooting an arrow out into the world.

In front of a mural by the visual artist Mundano, she points to the central figure, Alessandra Munduruku, whom she describes as a very important person in the Indigenous struggle for fighting mining companies in Pará. And she points out what she sees as hypocrisy: the mural with its message to stop the destruction is painted above a gas station, which for her represents the mining companies and that whole idea of progress. "Very São Paulo," she sums up.

The photographer arrived in São Paulo at the age of nine because of her parents' work, and she says it was a huge shock. Parintins is an island surrounded by the Amazon River; in São Paulo, all she saw were buildings and a completely polluted river running through the city. The children at school knew nothing about Indigenous peoples and repeated racist remarks, saying Indigenous people are dirty, smelly and lazy.

The family went six years without being able to return to Parintins. When they finally went, she was already 15, and her parents had bought a small camera. She recorded the entire trip: her cousins paddling canoes, her mother making manioc flour, the family in the middle of the forest, "living the true meaning of bem viver." That was where she felt truly happy and decided she wanted to do this for the rest of her life.

The documentary follows her to a village in the Jaraguá Indigenous territory in São Paulo, near Pico do Jaraguá, the highest point in the city. Their guide is Artur, whom she introduces as her partner in the struggle and now also in life. Along the way, she explains that this whole area used to be forest and points to an araucaria as one of the few survivors, since, by law, araucarias cannot be cut down.

The day is special because a gathering of shamans from several villages is taking place. She explains that outsiders are not always able to enter the territory, since authorization is required. Because of the relationship she has built with the community, they hold her in great affection and invite her to document events like this one.

She says there are many Indigenous communicators in various regions of the country and that in Jaraguá there is the Arandu Mirim collective, which documents what happens within the Indigenous land. Samara, a member of the collective, is editing footage recorded the day before, when the group climbed Pico do Jaraguá to sing and pray. The difference, they explain, lies in the gaze: non-Indigenous people can do the same work, but without their perspective. When they put together a documentary from scratch, they are the ones who decide what is important and what can be shown, and that makes the result "completely different." The material goes on Instagram and TikTok. For them, being in audiovisual media, even behind the camera, is also a way of learning and of young people developing politically.

In the Tekoa Yvy Porã village, the photographer talks with two leaders of the Indigenous movement, among them Tiago Karaí Djekupé. They recall the Bolsonaro government and the rhetoric of "I won't give a single centimeter of land to the Indians." According to them, it wasn't just rhetoric: the promise was kept, because no land was demarcated. They also cite the issue of licensing, which, in their assessment, allowed and even encouraged the invasion of Indigenous territories. That hurt a great deal, they say, and that is why Indigenous people need to seek out candidates and governments that maintain a dialogue with them.

The photographer recalls that the previous elections saw the largest number of Indigenous candidacies in history, and she believes this election should surpass that mark. For her, it is increasingly important to have Indigenous people, defenders of the environment and of human rights inside the National Congress. Facing one of the leaders, who is pregnant and, as she puts it, carries "the future" in her belly, she expresses her hopes for the vote: that people become aware of the importance of voting for Indigenous candidates who defend the Amazon, Indigenous peoples, Brazil's biomes and the guardians of these territories.

The documentary ends with the photographer's reflection on her origins. She says she comes from a great forest and that, when she looks at a tree, she does not see herself as different from it, but as part of it, as its guardian, a connection inherited from her ancestors. In the Amazon, she explains, the struggle is against deforestation, agribusiness and mining, which want to tear down the forest and destroy the rivers. In São Paulo, people also fight against deforestation, now under pressure from real estate development and speculation. And she concludes that it is not an individual struggle, but a collective one.