During the day, 23-year-old Black law student Simone rigorously discusses the role of women in Brazilian society in the lecture hall. She works at a center for victims of domestic violence and researches the causes of racism and femicide. At night, she performs in front of her webcam in a sex chat room and is incited to even more extreme practices. Her private life contrasts with her intellectual ambitions: a free-spirited mix of self-defense classes and safe space sexual experimentation with her university friends/lovers, along with video calls with a confidante and BDSM practitioner who steers her down this precarious path. As she seeks more radical forms of sexual gratification, the lines between body empowerment and self-harm, social responsibility and personal pleasure blur.

Rule 34 won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the Locarno Film Festival in 2022 – this was only the second time that a Brazilian film had won this award since Glauber Rocha’s 1967 Land in Trance! The title is named after the Internet meme ‘Rule 34’ about pornography. Murat sees porn primarily in terms of risk – and in this film she risks a lot: stretching the limits of formal film language and modes of storytelling she opens up new forms of political storytelling. Is this the answer to making feature films in times of crisis?

This film includes graphic and disturbing scenes of sexual nature and scenes of violence.