SKIN OF GLASS

A poetic and personal exploration of displacement, inequality and loss, SKIN OF GLASS follows Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol on a journey tracing the parallels between the collapse of her family and the abandonment of her father’s architectural masterpiece, a modernist glass skyscraper in the heart of São Paulo now occupied by hundreds of homeless families. Zmekhol wrestles with the legacy of her Syrian immigrant father, their loving but complicated relationship, and the after effects of Brazil’s decades under military rule. In the wake of a shocking tragedy, she connects with the new residents of her father’s building, seeking to understand how São Paulo’s most vulnerable found shelter within a modernist icon from Brazil’s golden age of architecture. Delicately interweaving the personal and political, SKIN OF GLASS is a profound and moving reflection of the country’s evolution through eras of darkness, transformation, and rebirth. This film is presented as part of the New American Perspectives program in partnership with the Vilcek Foundation. Director Denise Zmekhol will be in attendance for a special post-screening conversation.