PLAYTIME deals with the issue of education in Brazil through both a documentary and fictional approach. The students talk about problems that affect them, such as violence, racism, and femicide, citing experiences from their families. What’s more, they dramatize situations they’ve experienced, as they do when it’s impossible to film in schools surrounded by police operations. In another school, they rehearse the book Clara dos Anjos, by Lima Barreto, written at the beginning of the 20th century and which shows the abuse of a young black suburban girl. From this dramatization, they compare
this story with their experience of today’s problems. The documentary was based on a survey we carried out with public school teachers from primary and secondary schools. We then l ooked for schools representing different neighborhoods and communities in
Rio de Janeiro. The documentary part was developed from classroom debates on the topics raised in the research: school dropouts, racism, drug trafficking, stray bullets, and early pr egnancy. We also included in the film the events we faced both the police
operation and the difficulty and sometimes impossibility of getting permission to film.