Watch Plages (2001) Official Trailer

The action of González-Foerster’s Plages takes place in Rio de Janeiro on New Year’s Eve, presenting the viewer with a bird’s-eye view of Copacabana’s beach crowded with white-clad revelers gathering for a seasonal firework display. Structured around a sequence of memories that intermingle personal desire with utopian ambitions for the city, it references landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx’s pavement designs and architect Sérgio Bernardes’s plan to build helix-shaped apartment blocks. For González-Foerster, the beach—with its free social movement and fluid boundary between land and sea—is a symbol of possibility. Copacabana could be a utopia, but as it starts to rain and the film nears its end, a local fisherman makes a stark announcement: “Copacabana does not exist.”