Ant Nest (Formigueiro) is an independent documentary feature film that records women’s stories of struggle for their bodies and territories. The film was born from the desire to depict the everyday life of the grassroots feminist movement, in its diversity of colors, accents, and loves. A tour around 10 Brazilian states before the coup, which helps us to think about the country today.
How are women’s lives connected to the stories of social movements? How is a women’s grassroots movement built? Over the course of nearly one year, a small team of young communicators covered the 4th International Action of the World March of Women in Brazil, in 2015. Shortly after filming, as president Dilma Rousseff was ousted in a coup and Jair Bolsonaro rose to power, the Brazilian scenario changed significantly, and a new dimension was added to the documentary.
Women resisted and, with the Brazilian people, defeated Bolsonaro’s fascist government. Ant Nest helps tell the story of this troubled moment in the country’s history and especially inspires us to keep moving, rekindling the flame of hope and echoing women’s voices and pledges to make the necessary changes to free our bodies, territories, and lives.
From the Black uprising in Rio de Janeiro to Indigenous resistance in Mato Grosso do Sul, from the fight against mining companies in Minas Gerais to the battle against wind parks in Rio Grande do Norte. Seven years after shooting it, the horizon for which those women were fighting seems like a distant dream. But their journeys show possible ways out for Brazil.
In 2015, during the 4th International Action of the World March of Women, our goal as a movement was to strengthen grassroots and anti-capitalist feminism where women live, work, struggle, and dream. It is from these concrete territories and diverse bodies that every day we build a movement that pledges to change the world and women’s lives at the same time.
Ant Nest is a snippet of this everyday movement-building, of what these women—we, as militants—weave together in situations as diverse as those who sustain our movement: by thinking about and making food, organizing discussions and mobilizations, rehearsing with our drums, and communicating, sharing care, ideas, and questions, creating strategies of struggle and practices of change.
Ant Nest is a movie about movement and it is necessarily collectively—for the way it was produced, and also for the kind of feminism it depicts. The film was directed by Bruna Provazi and Tica Moreno and produced through crowdfunding with nearly 300 supporters. In 2019, we started to edit it, and only during the pandemic, with new support, it finally became true.
The film was launched in May 2022 and has been screened in several parts of the country, in sessions organized by militants of the movement in theaters, associations, universities, and labor unions. More than 1,000 people have attended these screenings, and the film was also featured on the Brazilian free-to-air TV channel TVT (Portuguese acronym for Workers’ TV) and at film festivals in Lisbon, Portugal and Dalton, United States.
Now Capire is launching it for international audiences with Spanish and English subtitles. The documentary will be available at this link until March 8th, 2023. Click the link below to watch it, and don’t forget to turn on the subtitles. We also recommend you watch the movie collectively, in sessions that foster discussions and more feminist organization.
Bruna Provazi and Tica Moreno are the codirectors of ANT NEST: Women’s Everyday Revolution.
