With a background in graffiti, Sissel Morell Dargis began taking pictures of the art that she and her friends were doing. This would become the beginning to her first documentary film, about her way into the illegal balloon gang culture in Brazil. In parallel, Sissel and her friends co-founded, in one of the largest favelas, a community project focusing on cultural exchange between locals in the favela and outsiders. To finish the film she had started, she went to Cuba to study documentary at the International School of Film and Television (EICTV). Her graduation short film, Plástico, premiered across the world and became the basis of her next film, currently in development. Sissel recently finished her feature documentary about the gangs in Brazil, which will premiere this fall. In collaboration with the Danish Film School in the Games and Animation degree, she directed the documentary game Cai Cai Balão, which was nominated at the Independent Games Festival (IGF) and IndieCade and exhibited at the Smithsonian Arts Museum.

Plástico — Two friends try to scam the illegal lottery mafia in Havana in order to win the big prize that will get them on a cruise away from the island. But the plan fails, and the friends are forced to flee the city overnight. With two bags full of Tupperware as the only resources they could get their hands on, they embark on a journey across the island. If they sell enough plastic, they could pay off their debt and maybe still get away. As the journey takes them deeper into the socialist jungle —where, despite a complete innocence toward capitalistic sales techniques, they realize there isn’t any money at all— and with the cops now chasing them down for illegal plastic selling, their friendship begins to crumble. Is survival of the fittest stronger than loyalty, or is loyalty the only thing you should hold on to when everything else is falling apart?