Mosquito Experiment Goes Nuclear in Brazil

Tiago Melo's sci-fi drama "Yellow Cake" is set to premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film unfolds in Picuí, Brazil, where scientists are engaged in a clandestine project to combat the Aedes aegypti mosquito, a vector for dengue fever.

This initiative, codenamed Yellow Cake, utilizes uranium extracted from the region with the goal of sterilizing the mosquitoes. Physicist Rubia Ribeiro bridges the gap between military command and the project's ambitious leader, Bill Raymond. Tensions rise as Raymond's haste to achieve results leads him to bypass safety protocols, ultimately causing the experiment to fail.

Following the disastrous outcome, Rubia must collaborate with local prospectors to avert an impending catastrophe. Melo describes the film as a satire reflecting on Brazil's history with global powers, whose aid often transforms the nation into a testing ground for foreign ideas. The screenplay was penned by Amanda Guimarães, Anna Carolina Francisco, Gabriel Domingues, Jeronimo Lemos, and Melo himself.