Seven Years in May is part of a recurring process in director Affonso Uchoa's cinema, as many of his works denounce the structure of mass incarceration as part of the notion of systemic racism. Originally from a peripheral municipality in the Brazilian region of Minas Gerais, the filmmaker paints a minimalist yet audacious portrait of his surroundings, focusing on a youth deprived of great perspectives. This is the case of Rafael, protagonist and co-writer of the film, who suddenly disappeared from the neighborhood. Nearly seven years later, he tells us head-on about the night he was tortured by police officers, and then harassed until he was forced to leave his region. Oscillating between direct testimony, reenactment and fiction, the film highlights the deep scars that police violence has left in the life of this young man, whose story is unfortunately far from unique.

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