Your dead cousin shows up as a ghost and needs to crash at your place—awkward family holidays just got weirder.
Joy is a fable about courage and youth. It tells the story of Luiza, 16 year old girl, who can not stand to hear about the end of the world… On a Christmas night, his cousin John is mysteriously shot in a street in the Lowlands and disappears into the night. Weeks later, while Luiza spends days alone in the apartment where he lives with his mother in Rio de Janeiro, a mysterious visitor comes knocking on your door: John, as a ghost, asking to hide there.
Direction
Two visionary directors weave fable and social realism seamlessly.
Cinematography
Rio's contradictions—beauty and danger—captured in hazy, poetic frames.
Director
Marina Meliande
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Filmed in Rio's Complexo do Alemão favela, using local non-actors alongside professionals—authentic tension permeates every frame.
Part of Brazil's 'Cinema de Contemplação' movement: slow, atmospheric films examining youth and violence in urban peripheries.
BR
