Marte Um (Mars One) Movie Review: Family, Dreams, and Life in Contemporary Brazil

What Is Marte Um About?

Marte Um follows the Martins, a Black lower-middle-class family living on the outskirts of a major Brazilian city, in the months after Brazil’s 2018 presidential election. The film is not built around one conventional protagonist. Instead, Gabriel Martins gives each member of the family a private desire that gradually comes into conflict with what the others expect from them.

Wellington, the father, works in a wealthy residential building and places enormous hope in his young son’s potential football career. Deivinho, however, is fascinated by astronomy and secretly imagines a future in astrophysics and space exploration. Tércia, the mother, is deeply shaken after becoming the target of a cruel television prank and begins to interpret a series of bad events as evidence that she may be cursed. Eunice, the older daughter, falls in love with Joana and begins to imagine a life outside her parents’ home.

The official synopsis from Filmes de Plástico describes the family as optimistic dreamers trying to continue their lives while feeling the pressure of a new political reality. That description captures the film well. Politics surrounds the Martins, but the film’s real subject is how people keep loving, working, dreaming, fearing, and disappointing one another inside that larger reality.

A Film About Four Dreams, Not Just One

The two earlier versions of this review on The Brazilian Ways were right to focus on the characters’ individual aspirations. That is the clearest organizing principle of the film. What deserves more emphasis, however, is that the four dreams are not simply parallel storylines. They constantly collide.

The film’s emotional intelligence lies in the fact that none of these desires automatically makes one character right and another wrong. Wellington can be overbearing and still be a loving father. Eunice can need independence and still care about the family she is leaving. Tércia’s fear may not be rational in a literal sense, but her distress is not treated as a joke. Deivinho’s ambition may seem impossibly distant, yet the film refuses to present dreaming as childish foolishness.

The Political Context Matters, but It Does Not Take Over the Film

Marte Um was shot at the end of 2018, immediately after the Brazilian presidential election. Sundance’s official description presents the Martins as a Black family trying to sustain their spirits and dreams after the election of a right-wing president who represents values very different from their own. The film’s historical setting is therefore not incidental.

At the same time, Gabriel Martins does not structure the movie as a direct political argument. The presidency is part of the atmosphere in which the family lives. It affects the emotional temperature of the story, but it does not replace the story.

That choice is one of the film’s strengths. It allows politics to appear in the way politics often appears in ordinary life: through television, conversation, anxiety about the future, economic pressure, assumptions about who belongs where, and the possibilities people imagine for their children.

Why the Family Feels So Convincing

The old TBW reviews described the film as relatable and emotionally involving. That judgment still holds, but the reason is more specific than “everyone has dreams.” The Martins family feels convincing because the screenplay pays attention to how affection and frustration can exist at the same time.

People interrupt one another, withhold information, make assumptions, try to protect each other, become angry for reasons that are partly about the present and partly about older wounds. The film rarely stops to announce what a relationship means. It lets meaning accumulate through ordinary behavior.

This is especially effective because Gabriel Martins distributes attention across the entire household. Deivinho’s dream of Mars could easily have turned the movie into a conventional inspirational story about a gifted child overcoming adversity. Instead, the film keeps returning to the adults and to Eunice. His dream matters, but it exists inside a family system.

Wellington Is More Complicated Than the “Strict Father” Role

Wellington is one of the most interesting characters because the film does not flatten him into a villain standing between his children and their freedom. His insistence on football can be frustrating, and his expectations create real tension. Yet Carlos Francisco plays him as a man whose pressure is inseparable from love, fear, class aspiration, and his own sense of what a successful future could look like.

The film also gives Wellington a history of alcohol dependence and recovery. This matters because his sense of control is hard-won. He wants to believe that discipline can create stability for himself and for his family. When life stops cooperating with the future he has planned, that belief is tested.

This is a stronger reading than simply saying that Wellington wants to fulfill his own failed dreams through his son. There is some projection in his behavior, but the character is richer than that summary.

Tércia’s “Curse” Is Not Just a Comic Side Plot

The earlier TBW articles correctly identified the television prank as a turning point for Tércia, but describing the aftermath only as “panic attacks” is too narrow. The film presents a more diffuse psychological disturbance: fear, insomnia, heightened sensitivity to danger, and a growing conviction that misfortune follows her.

What makes this storyline work is the tension between coincidence and interpretation. From the outside, the audience can see how a sequence of unrelated events might become connected in Tércia’s mind. From inside her experience, however, the fear feels coherent. Rejane Faria plays that uncertainty without making the character ridiculous.

The result is one of the film’s more subtle ideas: when the world feels unstable, people search for patterns. Tércia’s belief in a curse is personal, but the atmosphere of insecurity around the entire family makes her reaction feel connected to the film’s broader emotional landscape.

Eunice and Joana: Love, Independence, and Generational Change

Eunice’s relationship with Joana is handled with the same domestic scale as the rest of the film. The movie does not isolate her sexuality into a separate “issue storyline.” Her romance is part of a larger transition into adulthood and a challenge to the expectations of her parents.

That does not mean the tension disappears. Eunice has good reason to be uncertain about how her family will respond. But the film is more interested in how a family changes when one member claims the right to define her own life than in turning the story into a simple confrontation between tolerance and prejudice.

This storyline also contributes to one of Marte Um’s most important achievements: the Martins are not presented as a symbolic “Black Brazilian family” with one representative experience. They are four distinct people whose race, class, sexuality, work, age, gender, ambitions, and relationships intersect without becoming interchangeable.

Black Family Life Without Reducing Black Characters to Trauma

The representation of the Martins family is central to the film’s significance. Gabriel Martins became the first Black director selected to represent Brazil in the country’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Scholars and critics discussing the film have emphasized how unusual it remains for Black Brazilian families to be given this level of interiority and narrative control in mainstream-recognized cinema.

What is especially valuable is that Marte Um does not deny racism, class inequality, or political tension, but neither does it make suffering the only available story. The Martins eat, joke, fight, work, flirt, recover, dream, worry about money, watch football, fall in love, and look at the sky.

That ordinariness is not politically neutral. Giving Black characters the full range of ordinary human life is itself part of what makes the film distinctive.

Direction, Cinematography, Editing, and Music

The earlier TBW reviews called the technical work “impeccable.” That is too absolute for a serious review, but there is a strong case for praising the craft.

Leonardo Feliciano’s cinematography frequently gives the characters room to exist within their environments rather than treating Contagem merely as background. The visual approach supports the film’s central idea that home, neighborhood, work, and aspiration are connected. The camera is attentive without constantly announcing its importance.

The editing by Tiago Ricarte and Gabriel Martins keeps four character arcs moving without forcing them into identical rhythms. That structure can feel episodic, especially for viewers expecting a single plot to accelerate toward one major climax, but the looseness is also what allows the family to feel lived-in.

Daniel Simitan’s original score gives the film a gentle sense of scale. It helps connect Deivinho’s cosmic imagination to a story that remains firmly grounded in daily life. The contrast between the stars above and the practical pressures below is one of the movie’s most effective recurring tensions.

What the Film Does Not Do

A useful review should also explain what may not work for every viewer.

Marte Um is deliberately gentle. It is not a thriller about Brazilian politics, not a sports movie, and not an inspirational science story in the conventional sense. Viewers waiting for one of those genres to take control may find the movie less dramatic than expected.

The four-part structure also means that some conflicts receive less time than they might in a film centered on only one character. The movie often prefers observation to confrontation and emotional accumulation to plot twists. That is a strength if you respond to intimate family dramas, but it can feel diffuse if you prefer tighter narrative propulsion.

Variety’s review famously framed the film as warm-hearted but somewhat gentle in its bite. That is a fair critical tension to keep in mind. The film’s politics are present, but Martins is more interested in tenderness, possibility, and everyday contradiction than in delivering a direct indictment.

Why the Title Marte Um Matters

The title refers to Deivinho’s fascination with the idea of a human mission to Mars. The original real-world Mars One project proposed establishing a permanent human settlement on the planet, although the organization behind that project later failed. Inside the film, however, factual feasibility matters less than what Mars represents.

Mars is distance. It is a future almost unimaginably far from the limits that adults around Deivinho can see. It is also a way of asking what a child is allowed to imagine when class, race, geography, and family expectations have already begun to define the range of “realistic” possibilities.

The film does not need to prove that Deivinho will literally reach Mars. What matters is whether the people who love him can learn to take his desire seriously.

Spoiler Section: How the Family’s Crises Come Together

As the film approaches its final act, several pressures converge. Wellington’s work and sobriety are threatened. Deivinho’s football future collapses at the same moment that his father’s investment in it has become most intense. Tércia is forced to confront the origin of her belief that she is cursed. Eunice continues moving toward a life beyond the family home.

What is important is that the film does not solve these problems by restoring the old order. The family does not return to exactly what it was at the beginning. Instead, the ending suggests that love becomes more durable when each person is allowed to exist as someone other than the role another family member has assigned to them.

Deivinho’s homemade telescope is crucial. It turns what looked like a distant fantasy into something material that he has built with his own hands. When the family looks toward Mars together, the image does not erase the problems that came before it. It gives them a new way to look in the same direction.

That is why the ending works. The film does not promise that every dream will come true. It argues for something more modest and, in some ways, more demanding: the right to have a dream recognized by the people closest to you.

Marte Um and the 2018 Brazilian Election

The film takes place in the period surrounding the election and early presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. Sundance described the new president as representing values opposed to those of the Martins family, while Gabriel Martins has spoken about filming in late 2018 amid political polarization and uncertainty.

International viewers should resist reading every scene as a coded statement about Bolsonaro. The political context matters, but the family is not simply an allegory for Brazil. The film is stronger when we allow the characters to remain people first.

At the same time, the election changes the horizon around them. The question is not only “What will happen politically?” It is also “What futures do these people believe are possible now?” That is where the national context and the family story meet.

Production Background and International Recognition

Marte Um was written and directed by Gabriel Martins and produced by Filmes de Plástico, the Contagem-based production company associated with Martins, André Novais Oliveira, Maurílio Martins, and Thiago Macêdo Correia. The official production credits list Leonardo Feliciano as director of photography, Tiago Ricarte and Gabriel Martins as editors, Rimenna Procópio as art director, and Daniel Simitan as composer.

The film had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. It later received awards on the festival circuit, including the Special Jury Prize, Best Screenplay, and the Popular Jury award at the Gramado Film Festival according to the film’s festival profile.

In September 2022, the Brazilian Academy of Cinema selected Marte Um to represent Brazil in the race for the 2023 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Gabriel Martins was the first Black director in Brazilian history whose film was selected as the country’s Oscar submission. The film did not ultimately make the Academy’s shortlist or receive an Oscar nomination.

Who Is in the Cast?

Is Marte Um a Good Film for Portuguese Learners?

Yes, especially if you are an intermediate or advanced learner who wants exposure to Brazilian Portuguese inside believable family interactions rather than textbook dialogue.

The film is useful because the language changes with the relationships. Parents speak differently to children than partners speak to each other. Family arguments, affectionate moments, workplace exchanges, jokes, discomfort, and ordinary conversation all create different kinds of listening practice.

It is also valuable for cultural learning. You encounter football as family expectation, life in Greater Belo Horizonte, class differences between home and workplace, generational negotiation, sexuality, religion and superstition, work, sobriety, and the political atmosphere of late 2018.

Do not try to turn every scene into a vocabulary exercise on your first watch. Watch for the story first. Then return to a few scenes with Portuguese subtitles and notice complete expressions, reactions, and conversational rhythm.

Final Review: Is Marte Um Worth Watching?

Yes. But not because it is “a cinematic masterpiece,” as one of our older versions of this review claimed. That kind of language is too easy and does not explain the film.

Marte Um is worth watching because Gabriel Martins trusts ordinary life to carry dramatic weight. The movie does not need a spectacular event to make the Martins family matter. Its power comes from watching people slowly realize that loving someone is not the same as deciding who that person should become.

Deivinho’s dream gives the film its most memorable image, but the real achievement is the ensemble. Wellington, Tércia, Eunice, and Deivinho each have a future they are trying to protect. Sometimes those futures are compatible. Sometimes they are not.

The film’s optimism is therefore not naive. It emerges after disappointment, fear, conflict, financial pressure, and changes the family cannot reverse. The final sense of hope comes from adjustment rather than perfection.

For international viewers, Marte Um is also a valuable reminder that Brazilian cinema is far broader than the violent urban dramas most commonly exported abroad. This is a film about a Black family in Minas Gerais whose lives contain politics and inequality, but also affection, humor, romance, football, astronomy, work, frustration, and the right to imagine something more.

Frequently Asked Questions