Proibido Nascer no Paraíso

Hundreds of tourists flock to Fernando de Noronha Island daily. At the airport they pass crying pregnant women, who must temporarily leave this paradise. Since 2004, the Brazilian government has ordered them to give birth only on the mainland. The crystal ocean surface shatters on rocky shores, and a woman’s voice likens the cyclical motion of water to the course of childbirth. But the idyllic bond between nature and the cycle of life does not occur here. By government regulation, every woman in the seventh month of pregnancy is torn from her natural habitat and literally deported to the mainland. There she and other expectant mothers wait in the anonymous setting of hotel rooms for the “big day”. The government claims the island hospital cannot provide the necessary care for newborns. But the film hints that this is a targeted regulation of the local populace, aimed at providing enough land for investors and squeezing even more money from the photogenic landscape into government coffers. (One World)