The film began in silence. Grainy super-8 images of young woman and a young man in love: on a swing, in the sand, kissing, touching. This went on for what seemed like 5 minutes. I grew uncomfortable; I thought something was wrong with the sound. Then she spoke. She said, “I got pregnant on a Sunday.” And it was all over for me. I was already in Hermila’s world. She spoke in Portuguese with subtitles, but I could have sworn the words that spilled from her mouth were in English. I was so taken by the clarity of images and story, not once did I think about the words on the bottom of the screen.

The story unfolds on a bus as Hermila travels back to her hometown with her young son. She crosses over the sign that welcomes her to Iguatu, a hot, dusty little town lined with shacks and a few gas stations. Exhausted by her screaming infant and completely broke, Hermila returns to her grandmother’s home and waits for her husband to follow her from Sao Paulo. Of course, he never returns. Abandoned, Hermila sells raffle tickets and cleans truck stop bathrooms to make ends meet. Like any 21-year-old woman, she longs for freedom and happiness. Hermila begins frequenting the local taverns where she befriends local prostitute Jessica and becomes reacquainted with an old friend, Joao.

Eventually, Joao’s gentle persistence persuades Hermila to take him as a lover but love isn’t enough for Hermila. True to her erratic nature, Hermila devises a plan to raise money to leave the town by raffling herself off. She calls herself “Suely” and offers a chance for “one night in paradise” with the possessor of the winning ticket. As the town discovers her plot, she faces prejudice, disgust and the loss of reputation; making it all the more imperative that she purchase that one way ticket to a new life. With or without her son. With or without her loving new boyfriend.

The last scene shows the back of the welcome sign captured at the inception of the Film. It reads: “Here begins the longing for Iguatu.” Does Hermila leave? Does she return? That’s for you to discover.

As the credits rolled and the lights came up, I sat pondering my own journey, my own aloneness in the world. Somehow, Hermila had inspired me to respect my freedom in a way I hadn’t earlier. It seemed impossible to love a character so reckless and selfish, but yet I did. That’s when my technical brain kicked in. How did the director achieve this sympathy for Hermila? How was I transported so completely to this hot, dusty, foreign world? Unlike watching a film in a regular setting at the LA Film Festival, I didn’t have to ponder long. Writer Mauricio Zacharias took the stage for the post screening Q and A and the answers to my questions became quite clear: rehearsal and improvisational acting. The actors were never given a script. Two months before shooting the film the entire cast set up on location and began rehearsing scene by scene. Director Karim Ainouz would explain the situation and the stakes involved in the scene and the actors improvised the dialogue. On the day a given scene was to be shot, actors received the actual written text two hours before performance. The actors lived and breathed their characters, they lived and breathed Iguatu.

But it wasn’t just the acting that transported me; I was visually captivated. I got to know Hermila through her character, through the intricacies of her iris, the back of her neck, the sweat that dripped from her forehead. This attention to detail could have been monotonous, but it wasn’t. It was thrilling. The soundtrack was equally detailed – tacky Brazilian renditions of American love songs pumped in every tavern. It reminded me of my childhood, traveling through Eastern Europe with my parents, stopping in pubs that aspired to mimic the American way of life. This attempt only made the taverns seem more desolate and further away from the culture they strived to capture. Juxtaposed, Hermila stands out like the lit end of a dazzling firecracker; she’s ready to explode out of her tiny, confined, backwards environment.

The inspiration for the film stemmed from a real woman who created a media frenzy when she raffled herself off in a small Brazilian town. The rest of the story is fictional. Writers Zacharias, Ainouz and Braganca were handed a grant by the Cannes Film festival to write the script. A few years of writing, two months of rehearsal, five weeks of shooting and two million dollars later “Love for Sale” was completed. It won best Film Actress and Best Director at the Rio Film festival.

I don’t say this often: “Love for Sale” is a must see film.