Pictures of Ghosts: it’s expected that director Kleber Mendonça Filho has a great love and appreciation for his hometown, Recife; after all, his first two fictional features were set there and had a great sense of geography and local color. That, however, doesn’t really come across in this documentary; the voice-over, done by Mendonça Filho himself, is dry and dull, partly due to his monotonous voice, partly due to the text being read. Furthermore, the first part of the doc feels excessively self-indulgent, as it focuses not on Recife at large, but the apartment where he grew up and shot his early work. It becomes more interesting as it expands to show the fate of old movie theatres, a subject that is near and dear not only to the director but to film lovers in general; still, nothing here is novel or unique, in any sense. If there is one thing that is memorable in this film, it’s the sound design, which gives the film a lot of character beyond the images.