In this award-winning and hauntingly melancholic film, geologist José Renato travels to Sertão, an isolated region in Northeastern Brazil, to assess possible routes for a canal. For many, the canal will be a source of hope, but for those living on its direct course it only means requisitions, departure, and loss. As the journey progresses through impressionistic landscapes, the desolation of the surroundings mirrors Renato’s own life, making the trip increasingly difficult. His geological research is slowly pervaded by a sensation of groundlessness, an incessant pining for his ex-wife, and a yearning to go home. Marcelo Gomez and Karim Aïnouz (Madame Sata) travel across the desolate landscape of modern-day Brazil’s interior. A genuine experiment in narrative and form, I Travel Because I Have To… features a mix of formats – Super 8, DV, still photographs – with the resulting feel of an intimate travel diary.

"Beautifully structured and ultimately transcendent...a road movie in its purest form, offering an affecting record of processing loss and coming through to the other side. Gomes and Aïnouz work seamlessly together in the bleak Brazilian Northeast, creating a fictional travelogue for a character heard but never seen thanks to a creative combination of p.o.v. lensing and snapshots. Utterly unpretentious and deeply touching." — Jay Weissberg, Variety

"A genuine experiment in narrative and form, I Travel Because I Have To... features a mix of formats — Super 8, DV, still photographs — and the resulting feel of an intimate travel diary, although no home movie has ever been so beautiful, poetic, and filled with mythical resonances as this one. It's actually as if Karim Aïnouz and Marcelo Gomes had created a scrapbook of mental clippings about life in the uninhabited landscape of interior Brazil, harboring no political statements about poverty, but delivering instead some very intimate feelings." — Nando Salvá, BAFICI

"As singular as its title, I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You embraces road movie, personal journal and trance-like study of arcing grief." — Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times

"Like the best trips, I Travel goes places that couldn't have been anticipated." — Mark Holcomb, The Village Voice

"The movie's true brilliance comes from its portrayal of how the world curls around you in the grip of heartache-every song on the radio, every face you see, every story you're told reflecting only what you've lost." — Alison Willmore, Time Out New York

"Spellbinding little movie deserves lots of attention." —Eric Monder, Film Journal International

"Karim Aïnouz and Marcelo Gomes blend documentary with fiction to forge a tactile, strikingly woozy first-person perspective." — Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine

"Boldly introspective but illuminating travelogue across a desolate landscape in modern-day Brazil by an existential outsider." — Louis Proyect, REC.ARTS.MOVIES.REVIEWS

Venice Film Festival - Cinema Du Reel
Rio International Film Festival - Best Cinematography, Best Director
Havana Film Festival - FIPRESCI Award Best Sound
Cinélatino Rencontres de Toulouse - Grand Prix Coup de Cœur
Miami International Film Festival