Reflections

The discussion opens with Caru Alvares de Souza describing the background and inspiration for De Menor. After having directed the 2013 feature film De Menor, a film that covers the story of a boy facing court and his sister becoming his defense attorney, she was inspired to explore further cases within the same subject, such as juvenile court and teenage criminality. This led her to develop the 2025 TV Series De Menor which focuses on six teenagers and their cases and closes with a "reaction episode" that features a young artist and a defense lawyer discussing the TV series itself.

De Souza then explains how De Menor allowed her to reach a broader audience by adapting to a TV series format. Television can often reach people and communities that are otherwise underrepresented on screen. By bringing these conflicts into a more accessible format, she hopes to incite dialogue around justice, responsibility and inequality. In doing so, De Menor becomes a part of everyday life instead of a niche project only for film festivals.

Throughout the discussion, de Souza emphasized the many injustices within the Brazilian youth justice system, especially towards poor communities and people of color. She argues that these stories need to be told repeatedly in order for people to understand and engage with the root causes as well as develop empathy for those affected. Rotating the roles between actors was a deliberate choice. In doing so, no stereotypes, positions or perspectives are reinforced or forced upon the audience. Rather, this encourages the audience to constantly rethink their assumptions and justify argumentations without focusing on a single actor and their characteristics within the same role. This idea was strongly inspired by the concept of restorative justice, an alternative form of justice where instead of punishment of offenders, empathy, dialogue and repairing harm is encouraged.[1]

The rotating roles challenge both actors and viewers. De Souza argues that the concept of restorative justice has allowed the director to encourage empathy during the shooting of De Menor. Taciana Bastos argues that the main challenge of rotating roles had been to embody so many different lives, characters, and to truly reflect the emotional situation these characters had been through within De Menor.

This challenge is also faced in legislative theatre, a form of theatre that "engages members of a community and [identifies] solutions to ancestral and equitable systems and institutions, then translating these ideas into new laws".[2] Martino Mona argues that representing justice and legislation as theatrical events allows the audience to experience and understand the complexity behind these cases as well as the emotional situations the characters experience.

Martino Mona also highlights that presenting legal cases in this way helps the series reach more people who might otherwise show little interest in subjects concerning the justice system. He also, however, points out that stereotypes will inevitably continue to exist, as certain minority groups will, statistically, always be represented more often in certain roles. According to him, the series should have provoked the subversion of stereotypes even stronger, for example by letting a privileged character open their scene with a phrase like "Why me? Statistically, I should never end up in a position like this!"[3] as to expose the imbalance even more clearly.

Another notable feature of the series is its play with media formats. De Menor breaks the frame constantly by including unexpected elements such as short "ad breaks" performed by the actors on a theatre stage. These interruptions break the script and snap the viewer out of their immersion, forcing them to reflect, rethink and question their own perspective while watching.

Since De Menor has so far only been screened at film festivals, its release in Brazil will mark an important and potentially controversial step for De Souza. She is aware that by openly criticizing her own country's justice system, she may provoke backlash. So far, De Menor has mainly served as a discussion tool among social workers and people from within the justice system. She now plans a gradual release through different channels, for instance by screening De Menor at film festivals, social institutions or prisons. She views audiovisual storytelling as a powerful tool to spark dialogue but also recognizes the challenge that researchers face when finding ways of communicating with the broader public. A release of De Menor on television may be a promising strategy.

De Souza situates her TV show within the current political climate in Brazil, where debates around justice, inequality and public security have become increasingly polarizing. In such an environment, a show that appeals to empathy and challenges stereotypes may even be perceived as radical.

From my own perspective, De Menor manages to reveal institutional injustice in a playful but firm manner. It succeeds in exposing contradictions within the system in a way that grabs the viewer's attention and reminds them that justice is not always neutral, but often shaped by race, gender, class, or geography. It reflects a truth that is often ignored; that justice is not blind but selective. Through rotating roles and shifting formats, De Menor manages to show that empathy is a significant part of fairness, which in turn encourages the viewer to question their own assumptions. It succeeds in presenting a serious issue in an engaging and capturing, as well as a thought-provoking way.

[1] Wilson, 2005

[2] Recording of discussion

[3] Recording of discussion