Abstract

The present paper analyzes the fallacy of racial democracy in Brazil, studying the film The Case of the Wrong Man, documentary by Camila Moraes which investigates in detail the death of Júlio César de Melo Pinto, a black young man murdered by the police on May, 14th, 1987, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The documentary feature film was born in 2015, when the movie director was in college and taking a course on investigative journalism. Through several collected testimonies, the movie director reproduces the episodes involved in the execution of Júlio César, bringing to the film the view, the technique and the sensitivity peculiar to a black woman movie maker who reaffirms the osition of the black cinema in the space of the feminine. A documentary at the same time expository and investigative, marked by the argument that “Black lives matter”, The Case of the Wrong Man, consolidates itself as a film from within, towards from the outside. By denouncing the genocide of the Brazilian black youth, the film presents the helplessness and hopelessness of the black families in the country and reiterates the innocence of Júlio César.