内容摘要：People relax next to the day’s catch after fishing on makeshift rafts in Cojimar, east of Havana, Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

People relax next to the day’s catch after fishing on makeshift rafts in Cojimar, east of Havana, Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Transgender dancers with the Paraiso de Tuiuti samba school rehearse in heels for the Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)Transgender dancers with the Paraiso de Tuiuti samba school rehearse in heels for the Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Transgender women with the Paraiso de Tuiuti samba school wait for a rehearsal for the Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)Transgender women with the Paraiso de Tuiuti samba school wait for a rehearsal for the Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)Transgender woman Negriny Venture, right, talks with a transgender friend before their Paraiso de Tuiuti samba school rehearsal for Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Transgender woman Negriny Venture, right, talks with a transgender friend before their Paraiso de Tuiuti samba school rehearsal for Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)Such statistics are at least partially driven by poor reporting elsewhere and Brazil’s active network of advocates, but experts agree transphobia is ubiquitous. During last year’s local elections,

and trans people continue to struggle to land jobs or secure places to live.

Benevides has been working with Tuiuti to provide trans women and travestis with opportunities. For months, she has organized two classes: one teaching samba, so they can get work as professional dancers, and another for costume design. The parade has been an opportunity to strengthen bonds between the samba and trans communities while conveying a political message, Benevides said.This is an often breezy and funny movie for what, on paper, is a difficult and dark story. But the comic tone of “My Dead Friend Zoe” is, itself, a spirited rejection to not just the heaviness of many films about veterans but of the grief that can consume those who have dealt with loss and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Throughout the film, Zoe appears only to Merit, ala Brad Pitt in “Fight Club,” singing alongside her as she drives or impatiently waiting for Merit to come home from a run. Whether this, following some unspecified end to Zoe, is a healthy thing or not for Merit is increasingly in doubt. Merit needs to cling to her friend, or her memory of her. But Zoe also rolls her eyes at any suggestion of talking through her feelings. Zoe, as an apparition, is both the cause and relief to her pain.There are a few other points of view, courtesy of two of our finest actors. Freeman plays the counselor of Merit’s mandatory group sessions. He refuses to let Zoe coast. To pressure her to share and participate, he threatens withholding Zoe’s certification.

Meanwhile, Merit’s grandfather, Dale (Harris), a Vietnam vet, has just been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s. Merit is tasked with keeping an eye on him at his rural lakeside cabin and helping him into a retirement community — a prospect that infuriates him. As Merit’s original inspiration for joining the army, Dale — stubborn and tight-lipped — epitomizes an earlier generation of soldier.In toggling between the present and wartime flashbacks, “My Dead Friend Zoe” is sometimes a bumpy ride. The interplay between Merit and Zoe also shifts, beginning more like a buddy comedy and veering toward horror-film haunting, especially when Merit hesitantly agrees to a date with a worker at the prospective retirement home (Utkarsh Ambudkar).