‘The Riverbank’ review: Feverish Brazilian debut effectively opposes queer lives and Bolsonarian Evangelicalism

Dirs/scr: Matheus Farias, Enock Carvalho. Brazil-Germany. 2026. 120mins

The atmosphere is sweaty, humid and somewhat delirious in The Riverbank, the feature debut from filmmaking duo — and real-life couple — Enock Carvalho and Matheus Farias. They are based in Recife, Brazil, also the homebase of Kleber Mendonça Filho, director of acclaimed works The Secret Agent and Pictures Of Ghosts on which Farias worked as an editor. Mixing Evangelical religious fanaticism and queer cruising into a heady, very Brazilian brew, The Riverbank has already picked up awards at Locarno and Rio ahead of its Thessaloniki Film Festival bow, with further festival play likely.

The riverbanks are a sensuous, hedonistic and even magical border area that hides all kinds of surprises

Thirtyish Izaquiel (a striking Caique Copque) works in “janitorial services”,  he himself likes to put it – though he’s honest enough to add that it adds up to “cleaning, mostly,” even before being asked what that precisely entails. He’s also a queer horndog, into cruising the mangroves along Recife’s riverbanks and, at one point, encouraging two men in the toilets he’s cleaning to get it on right in front of him.

This kind of risky behaviour gets the handsome man into hot water with his boss when he finds out what Izaquiel tolerates on the job. He’s subsequently transferred to a major evangelical church that is in need of a cleaner; especially since their frequent full-body baptisms of new adult converts leave a lot of water on the floor of their main gathering space. Initially, the place seems like any other that Izaquiel has cleaned, with the exception perhaps of the undertone of homophobia in the voice of the pastor (Robério Diógenes, the corrupt police chief from The Secret Agent) when he tells Izaquiel to get rid of his nail polish and the jewellery in his ear. 

At home, Izaquiel lives with several trans friends in a kind of makeshift family that not only replaces but clearly eclipses the conservative clan the man grew up in. He and his motley crew go out to clubs, but Izaquiel also frequently wanders off alone into the bushes along the riverbanks, hoping for some action. It is there that he runs into the enigmatic but enticing Jeremias (Ítalo Martins, also from The Secret Agent), a hulking, dark-skinned blond who feels like many a queer’s man fantasy. Yet there’s a mysterious and possibly menacing side to his character that’s heightened by reports of queer individuals being violently maimed and killed in the area in which they meet.

One of several Brazilian films that contrast cruising and queer liberation with the country’s recent and very tense political climate, The Riverbank recalls works such as Felipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon’s Night Stage, in which an actor and a politician inconveniently discover they like sex in public spaces. Beyond the queer angle, Farias and Carvalho’s take on the dangers of Bolsonarian Evangelicalism also convinces, even as it lacks the more nuanced approach of a work such as Gabriel Mascaro’s Divine Love, set in a futuristic Brazil obsessed with conception.

The chief pleasure of The Riverbank, which is also written by the directors, isn’t so much in figuring out how the different plot lines become entwined, as the work’s not novelistic enough for the few story strands to connect in any surprising way. Its pleasures lie more in how everything is staged, and in the discovery of the extent to which Carvalho and Farias will choose to leave strict realism behind. The riverbanks of the title are constantly being shown as not only a dangerous but also a sensuous, hedonistic and even magical border area that hides all kinds of surprises. Appropriately, the sweat and humidity basically drip off the screen, courtesy of the work of two very talented women: cinematographer Luciana Baseggio (who also shot Night Stage) and production designer Maíra Mesquita (Mascaro’s Neon Bull).