Movies: Baby (2024) by Marcelo Caetano - When Survival and Love Collide in São Paulo

A Queer Survival Story Painted in Realism

Baby is a co-production between Brazil, France, and the Netherlands, directed and co-written by Marcelo Caetano. It follows Wellington, nicknamed Baby, played by João Pedro Mariano—a young man freshly released from juvenile detention, abandoned by his parents, and forced to survive alone on São Paulo’s streets. He meets Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), an older male escort who becomes both a guardian and a romantic partner. Through this complicated bond—interwoven with friendship, sex work, chosen family, and violence—the film explores themes of identity, resilience, and queer community in urban Brazil. Premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week 2024, and later released in Brazil in January 2025, Baby is both raw and tender, offering a vivid portrait of marginalized humanity.

Why to Recommend Movie — Grit, Heart, and Queer Realism

• A nuanced queer narrative: Baby’s relationship with Ronaldo goes beyond clichés, revealing power swings, tenderness, and survival in layers.It captures the messiness of human connection in a way that avoids sentimentality, showing characters both broken and deeply humane.

• Vivid urban portrait: The film stains the grandeur of São Paulo’s streets with desperation, hope, and longing.Every frame pulses with life and decay, making the city itself a character—both vast and claustrophobic.

• Festival-lauded direction: Caetano brings the poise he honed in Body Electric to this feature, utilizing understated drama and poetic realism effectively.His focus on marginalized voices and emotional truth aligns with the most urgent and necessary cinema today.

Where to watch: https://www.justwatch.com/fr/film/baby-2025-0 (France), https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/baby-2025-0 (US), https://www.justwatch.com/ca/movie/baby-2025-0 (Canada)

Link IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32119268/

Link Review: https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/462648/

About movie: https://m-appeal.com/catalogue/baby

What is the Trend Followed? — Poetic Queer Social Realism

• Intimate queer storytelling: Joining a wave of films that depict queer lives without glamor or tragedy—just lived truth.Baby uses realism to celebrate and expose the vulnerabilities of its characters, in contrast to sensational narratives.

• Chosen family and survival: The surrogate bonds that arise in queer communities under pressure are central here.This reflects a growing cinematic focus on made family and the emotional ties that sustain people when biological ones fail.

• Festival-first auteurism: Premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week, it follows the current model where bold indie films gain prestige and distribution through festivals.This approach allows new voices, especially from underrepresented communities, to gain visibility globally.

Director’s Vision — Care in the Margins

• Championing the marginalized: Caetano brings empathy to characters society often ignores, giving them complexity, agency, and dignity.His approach avoids pity, creating portrayal that feels urgent and real.

• Poetic economy: Dialogue is deliberate, scenes linger in silence, and emotion emerges through expression, not exposition.This structure rewards attentive viewers with emotional clarity that feels earned.

• Sound and rhythm as character: A percussive, vibrant score and immersive soundscape shape the movie’s city heartbeat.The film’s rhythm mirrors Baby’s own urgency—uneven, vulnerable, and alive.

Themes — Identity, Survival, and Belonging

• Queer youth in crisis: Baby is both a coming-of-age and a coming-to-terms-with-reality story about queer youth without safety nets.

• Blurred lines of intimacy: The emotional boundaries between protector, lover, and exploiter are fluid and fraught.

• Kinship across generations: Chosen family includes street friends, ex-partners, and rivals—each offering a kind of home.

• Resilience in abandonment: Every moment of tenderness is a wink of survival in a world built to eject him.

Key Success Factors — Authenticity As Strength

• Outstanding debut performances: Mariano and Teodoro radiate raw emotional truth, anchoring every scene.Their chemistry is neither innocent nor calculated—it simply is.

• Cultural specificity with universal resonance: Grounded in São Paulo’s LGBTQ+ scene, the story feels both local and globally human.It speaks to crises of identity, belonging, and survival that echo everywhere.

• Festival acclaim leads to reach: Cannes recognition helped secure global distribution through Dark Star and Uncork’d, ensuring the film travels.This gives it the rare ability to engage both queer communities and wider audiences with storytelling that challenges and moves.

Awards & Nominations — A Decorated Debut

The film premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week and earned the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for Ricardo Teodoro. It went on to win numerous awards—including Best Film and Acting in Lima, Best Latin American Film in San Sebastián, and multiple Brazilian festival honors—affirming its emotional and artistic impact across continents. 

Critics Reception — Bold, Polished, and Necessary

• Olivia Popp (Cineuropa) called it a vibrant portrayal of queer men in São Paulo, praising its social scope and emotional depth.The film’s layered story, populated with nuanced characters, paints a rich urban tapestry of survival and identity. 

• Cody Dericks (AwardsWatch) described Baby’s exploration of identities and survival as riveting, with a powerful age-gap relationship at its core.He highlighted how the characters learn from each other across blurred roles. 

• Christoph Reiser (OutNow) deemed it raw, authentic, and sometimes difficult—less a polished narrative, more a lived experience.His review acknowledges the film’s challenge: it doesn’t explain, but rather observes life in motion. 

Summary: Critics universally praise Baby’s emotional honesty, standout performances, and cinematic realism—some noting its pace as deliberate, but recognizing its uncompromising vision.

Reviews — Tender, Harsh, and Heartfelt

• Positive reviews highlight its balance of vulnerability and defiance, noting how it gives queer youth the dignity of complexity and survival instinct.

• Its non-linear journey through intimacy and family dynamics was lauded for reflecting real lives over tidy arcs.

• The film’s soundtrack, performances, and mise-en-scène each earned recognition for contributing to its emotional resonance.

Summary: Baby is described as tender yet tough, a film that challenges viewers to stay present with lives most films don’t attempt to humanize. Letterboxd+1Wikipedia

Movie Trend — Queer Realism in Urban Cinema

Baby epitomizes a trend of gritty, character-driven queer stories rooted in real urban settings. Unlike mainstream gay narratives, these films prioritize emotional survival, chosen family, and social invisibility as sources of drama and humanity.

Social Trend — Visibility Through Urgency

The film mirrors contemporary calls for more nuanced and visible LGBTQ+ representation—especially stories that intersect with poverty, incarceration, sex work, and chosen kinship. Baby refuses easy hope but makes a place for queer endurance at the center of cinema.

Final Verdict — A Fierce, Compassionate Portrait of Queer Resilience

Baby is a rare feat: a film that merges social critique with queer intimacy to create something unsentimental, urgent, and deeply warm. Powered by compelling performances and an unflinching gaze, it carves space for stories we need but seldom see. Marcelo Caetano has delivered a queer coming-of-age drama that doesn’t just speak—it demands to be felt. A vital film of 2024.