The virtues of economy, empathy, and negotiation find ample cinematic expression in Gustavo Vinagre’s I Remember the Crows, a deceptively straightforward portrait of a lady that extracts multitudes from little more than a camera, an apartment, and a single, sleepless night. This outwardly simple exercise in one friend getting another to talk about herself soon blossoms into a rich, wonderfully organic exploration of transsexuality, cinema, and, life as well as the myriad different roles played in all three, including those of the (standard) documentary.
It’s nighttime in São Paulo and Julia Katharine can’t sleep, so she takes to the sofa with a cigarette and glass of rosé and starts to talk while Vinagre films her, listening and coaxing out more details as required. The account she gives is effectively her…