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A genuine oddity - a full length Brazilian documentary about Orson Welles' uncompleted It's All True, filmed by Welles with a crew of 40, and 12 cameras in Brazil and Mexico in 1941. For a variety of reasons the footage was never edited into a coherent film.
Seven years in the making director Rogerio Sganzena has used newsreel footage, excerpts from several Welles films, recordings made from the great director's radio shows, and some peculiar dramatised sequences involving a local actor playing the part of Welles. When Welles arrived in Brazil, it was under the auspices of Roosevelt's 'good neighbour' policy being extended to certain Third World countries. Welles established contact with intellectuals and well known artistes, but the nearer he came to these people, the greater became his suspicion of the state authorities. Not All Is True argues these political problems had much to do with Welles' failure to complete the film. Rogerio Sganzena is a film critic and founder of a faction of underground cinema in Brazil.