Brazilian Janaína Marques’ Berlinale Forum Player ‘I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival’ Swooped on by Patra Spanou (EXCLUSIVE)

Düsseldorf-based boutique outfit Patra Spanou Film has boarded international sales on Brazilian Janaína Marques’ debut feature “I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival” (“Fiz Um Foguete Imaginando Que Você Vinha”). 

The pickup comes ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum section, a key launchpad for more experimental and first-time auteur-driven indie cinema.

Related Stories

Teyana Taylor Sobs During Golden Globes Win for Supporting Actress: 'To My Brown Sisters... Our Voices Matter'

Inside the Oscar-Shortlisted and Annie-Nominated ‘The Girl Who Cried Pearls,’ a Fable for Times of Unfettered Greed 

For Patra Spanou, the acquisition fits its festival-first playbook: working with producers on positioning their festival market launch while representing international rights for distinctive indie features and documentaries.

“I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival” follows Rosa (Verônica Cavalcanti), a woman in her fifties who, during an MRI scan, is instructed to “think of a happy memory” – a prompt that triggers a search for her mother, Dalva (Luciana Souza).

Dalva’s absence is tied to a defining event: she was imprisoned after killing a man who was about to murder a woman, a trauma that has shaped Rosa’s adult life.

Marques structures the film as a memory-driven road movie, cross-cutting Rosa’s clinical present with the imagined reunion she builds with her mother. 

The feature adds to the contemporary women-led auteur canon, with touches of magical realism and a queer emotional sensibility.  

“Our very own bodies, as a means for survival, wind up embracing certain aspects of delirium,” Marques said, framing imagination as a survival strategy. 

Marques says the film is built from Rosa’s point of view: Locations shift with her emotions and sound design links what she actually lived to what she imagines. 

Conceived during the height of the pandemic in Brazil, she added that the film’s insistence on joy and care is a deliberate response to a moment of acute crisis.

Creative pedigree and production

“I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival” marks Marques’ first feature  following a decorated short-form run. A graduate of Cuba’s EICTV and Spain’s Universidad Carlos III, she broke out with short “Los Minutos, Las Horas,” which premiered at Cannes’ Cinéfondation and went on to win prizes at Clermont-Ferrand, San Sebastián and Havana, among others.

The film is produced by Maurício Macêdo at Moçambique Audiovisual, based in the Brazilian northeastern city of Fortaleza. Delírio Filmesis also behind the film. Moçambique Audiovisual also handles domestic distribution, with consultancy by Fistaile.

Institutional and partner support includes Instituto Mirante de Arte e Cultura, high-profile philanthropic initiative Projeto Paradiso, Show Me The Fund and the Embassy of Brazil in Berlin.