Luna Alkalay has spent fifty years in Brazilian cinema without ever ceasing to gaze into the same abyss: that of human relationships at their breaking points.

In 1975, early in her career, she directed Cristais de Sangue, a drama that follows a man searching for his missing father in the Chapada Diamantina — a coming-of-age journey through fabulous places and characters, such as the enigmatic Maria do Rigoletto.

Thirty years later, in Estados Unidos do Brasil (2004), Luna returned to directing and turned her gaze to the outskirts of São Paulo and to three young people living as lookalikes of American idols, exploring the tension between personal and national identity with subtle irony.

In 2025, a year after the restoration and public re-release of the digitized copy of her debut film, Luna the director also returns with Trópico de Leão, a film born of a personal wound — the traumatic abandonment experienced by a woman in love — and transforms it into myth, fragmenting her protagonist between Medea, Penelope, and Echo.

Unafraid of discomfort or exposure, she creates a work that is at once a mirror and an indictment, an outpouring and an act of resistance. This retrospective, the first exhibition organized by the Sara y Rosa platform in partnership with Cine Santa Tereza, offers an opportunity to witness this evolving journey — and to speak with the filmmaker herself about her experiences over half a century in cinema, amid crystals and tropics, passions and fury.