The Blue Trail review: A genre-blending coming-of-age story
The Brazilian film, The Blue Trail, won three awards at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival, including the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, so I had reasonable expectations going in.
Gabriel Mascaro‘s film is set in a near-future Brazil where the government prioritises productivity above all else. When they reach a certain age, elderly citizens are let go from their jobs (the government “wants them to rest”) and forcibly relocated to remote colonies to stop them from sabotaging national productivity. When her time comes, 77-year-old Tereza (Denise Weinberg) refuses to accept her fate and rebels against the system.
Tereza is not ready to give up on her life, her freedom and her dreams. In particular, she wants to fly on a plane before she is put out to pasture. However, she is unable to buy a plane or bus ticket as she has been flagged by the government. So Tereza embarks on a transformative boat journey along the Amazon instead.
I loved the concept and the rules of this dystopian society, and respected the way Mascaro blended multiple genres – road movie, coming of age, dystopian, fantasy – to make The Blue Trail impossible to define and put into a box. It’s also refreshing to see a movie about a 77-year-old who is experiencing a new lease of life instead of facing death or ill health. We so rarely get to see elderly characters having so much adventure, and Weinberg plays Tereza with fierce determination and rebelliousness.
Along the way, Tereza meets a wide array of characters, most notably Cadu (Rodrigo Santoro), a world-weary skipper who has an existential crisis when he drops blue drool from a snail (hence the title) into his eyes and sees his future. Santoro plays a very different character than usual and made his section the highlight of the journey.
These encounters have mixed results overall. For example, the section featuring Roberta (Miriam Socarras), who makes her living selling digital Bibles from her boat, goes on a bit too long, and my interest in the story started to wane. Tereza also takes a crazy risk at one point, and I couldn’t understand her motivation.
The Blue Trail starts strong but slowly (and I really mean slowly) loses its focus and tight grip on the story and concludes with an open-ended whimper.
In cinemas Friday 17th April
Read my interview with Gabriel Mascaro here