Tagline:

On the island of Boipeba, shellfish gatherer and singer Ritta Faromi traces her life through the rhythms of nature, memory and music, reclaiming her voice and identity after years of silence. 

Synopsis:

Ritta Faromi – The Arrow That Glides Over the Waters is a hybrid documentary that blends observation and dramatized gesture to portray Ritta, a Black trans singer and shellfish gatherer living on Boipeba Island, in Bahia, Brazil. Through a first-person narration, the film unfolds as an intimate journey connecting memory, territory, and spiritual resistance beyond Western colonial logic.

For Ritta, the sea, the mangrove, the house, and the body are temples. Shot in contemplative black and white, the camera follows her daily rituals—gathering shellfish, singing, dancing, praising the Orishas—guided by the tides and the wisdom of Candomblé. Nature is not a backdrop, but a living force that mirrors her inner world.

Like the ebb and flow of the sea, fragments of memory surface: domestic violence, religious fundamentalism, and imposed norms that sought to silence her voice. Ritta’s spiritual initiation becomes a turning point, revealing the interconnection between ancestry, nature, and self.

Her livelihood reflects ancient African and Indigenous knowledge, based on reciprocity rather than exploitation. Like the meaning of her name, Faromi—“the arrow that glides over the waters”—Ritta moves forward with grace and presence. Her story is not one of linear overcoming, but of transformation: a life where body, spirit, and land move freely as one.

Project representatives:

Joana Antonaccio Rodrigues (Director and Writer)

Evelyne Lessa Cezar Santos (Producer)