Continuing the Afrofuturist docufiction of White Out, Black In, Adirley Queirós’s Once There Was Brasília takes on the legacies of Brazil’s structural racism and the 2016 coup against Dilma Rousseff. W4, a disgraced intergalactic agent, is given the opportunity to acquire land for his family by traveling to earth to assassinate Juscelino Kubitschek, the president who founded Brasília, on the day the city was to be inaugurated. Instead, he ends up in Ceilândia (a suburb founded for Brasília’s black population) on the verge of Rousseff ’s impeachment. Funny and visually dazzling (the cinematographer is filmmaker Joana Pimenta), Queirós’s film continues in the bold tradition of Brazilian underground cinema. (Film at Lincoln Center)

Portuguese spoken, English subtitles