Yellow Cake

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Note of intent

The idea for Yellow Cake appeared to me while I was shooting the short documentary Urânio Picuí. Located in the countryside of Seridó Paraibano, Picuí is known as “Rare Earth” and contains in its subsoil a large reserve of radioactive minerals, such as tantalum, niobium and uranium. As a child, I heard stories from my family, locals from that city, about the exploitation of these minerals during World War II. In 1944, a group of Americans arrived in Picuí and would have extracted uranium as part of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Synopsis

In a not so distant future, Brazil is taken by a violent epidemic transmitted by a very common brand of mosquito. The lack of alternatives drive the Brazilian government to accept a controversial proposal from North American scientists: to be guinea pig in a nuclear experimen which aims to exterminate the insects. The city of Picuí, Northeast countryside, a place known for its vast uranium reserves, is chosen for the atomic tests. When the American experiment is a failure, Picuí and the region are faced with a much bigger drama: due to the radiation spread in humans throughout the tests, a genetic mutation makes the mosquitos grow in size to proportions never imagined. The population goes wild in panic. The press ask for explanations. Seeing Doctor Harley and his American colleagues flee the country, Pedro Macedo – a brilliant college student in nuclear physics – decides to lead the adventure of freeing Picuí from the threat of the giant mosquitos.

Visual concept

The genre assumed by Yellow Cake is Science Fiction, in its various elements, from the premise of the nuclear tests in the countryside, the disaster generated by the scientists failure, the mutations in the growing mosquitos that take the city. The film has elements of a thriller along with subtle humor, contrasting absurd situations with naturalistic performances. This sense of humor is also employed to satirize the subservience to the richest countries by the peripheral ones.