In 2016, a team of Ufologists and filmmakers set out to re-investigate the events of the unusual UFO phenomena that took place on May 19th 1986, when there were multiple sightings of unidentified flying objects across several states in Brazil, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Goiás. As the team delve deeper, what they uncover turns out to be more sinister than what they expected to find.
Luciano Maciel, Dr Nelson Akerman, Stefano Capuzzi Lapietra and Fernando Tiezzi
With a delightful knack for surreal satire and a quirky mix of suspense and comedy, Lapietra captures that moment in time, as this group of Ufologists tries to dig out the truth of what really took place on the notorious ‘Night of the UFOs’. Reports had indicated that the UFOs could vary their velocity from subsonic to supersonic as well as hover, could emit a series of different coloured lights, or none at all, could accelerate or de-accelerate in the blink of an eye, and appeared to show intelligence in their capacity to fly in formation and maintain a safe distance from observers.
The 2016 UFO team, is comprised of ufologist and Astrobiologist Professor Nelson Akerman and his colleague, Dr Fernando Knudsen, plus the self-taught Guilherme Gil de Oliveira Melo, (who reminds everyone that he has a scientific degree in Ufologic Arts and used to host a YouTube channel called “UFO ARCHIVE”). They get together to share their expertise on this project, and decide to focus on people who claimed to have had direct interactions with the aliens and set out to find them.
Guilherme de Oliveria, Stefano Capuzzi Lapietra and Dr Akerman examine Deoclécio Teixeira in detail.
Akerman in particular is determined to uncover the mysteries and clarify the nebulous aspects of the earlier information from the police reports and media articles. Akerman and his team, hire a film crew to record every detail of their journey, and they all end up travelling and living in a motorhome that becomes their base and lab.
Despite all their studies however, it turns out to be the sound man, Fernando Tiezzi, who has the sharpest eyes and alerts them every time something strange takes place. All the people on screen are not professional actors, but part of the actual film crew and the members of the 2016 UFO investigation team. Before long, Lapietra draws us into the investigation and we start to become as psyched up as they are.
The film crew cover the vehicle in an array of surveillance cameras both inside and out, so as not to miss the slightest sign of alien activity. However, other than the very optimistic UFO specialists, the film crew do not expect anything to actually happen.
“The idea is to have no blind spots so all kinds of UFO phenomena can be captured”
So, when unusual things do begin to take place around them, it turns the whole investigation up a notch or two upping the ante to another level.
The UFO team finally manage to track down the three key witnesses. These include Gabriel, a ten- year-old lad who has done some comprehensive drawing of what he saw, a woman who claims to have been impregnated by an alien, the foetus of whom she claims to have miscarried, and a farmer, Deoclécio Teixeira who reported that he was brutally probed in the anus by aliens during the long week that he was abducted.
Dr Knudsen exhibits the evidence
Lapietra is no novice to combining suspense and comedy having a string of award -winning shorts to his name, including his first college short ‘Noite Perdida’ (Wasted Night- 2012) which was awarded a nomination at the Los Angeles Comedy Film Festival. It was followed by ‘The House Job’ that won Best Foreign Short Film and Best Director as well as the Special Jury Prize for a short at the Raindance Film Festival. He was then rewarded with the chance to write and direct the Trailer Campaign for the 24th Raindance Film Festival.
Mrs Noiara with her 'hybrid' foetus.
During the filming in 2016, the film crew and the UFO team share an extraordinary experience on May 15t,h , which they all witness. This encounter leads to the alien abduction of Dr Akerman and Deoclécio Teixeira when they are (allegedly) sucked up into a spaceship from where neither ever returned. Allegedly, because apparently, to the total despair of the UFO Team and the film crew, this valuable footage is lost when their motorhome base is vandalized and burnt to a cinder.
However, in 2024, things start to take a sinister turn when the Pentagon decide to de-classify and release its UFO archive. To the UFO’s team’s amazement, among that released footage, they find images from their final key recording that they had believed destroyed in the fire.
This leads an “Unknown Researcher’s group”, led by Ariel Wollinger, and 60 specialists from different fields, to request their 2016 footage in order to further probe what is going on. They start to uncover a conspiracy of cover-ups, organized by ‘Men in Black’ who, it turns out, had been spying on them during their whole journey, proof of which they find in some of the footage.
Men in black
The team begin to deduce that there is a hidden government composed of alien hybrids, including one of their own, revealed by his lack of earlobes, suspiciously like those of the local Mayor Clovio, who has been disrupting their studies. Akerman and Knudsen decide they must investigate them both more thoroughly before going any further.
In this delightful film, Lapietra challenges our beliefs, and ideas about aliens and space, even our paranoia in that regard, teasing us relentless along the way. Some of the finer details of the story remind me of the ‘The Alien Abduction Files’, a comprehensive book (if not as humorous), about abduction and what can befall an abductee. It was written by Kathleen Marden (whose aunt and uncle were abducted) and Denise Stoner.
Wherever you stand on the alien issue, forget ’Spinal Tap’, here is an hilarious and enjoyable film to watch about UFOs that should not to be missed!
ABDUCTED FILES (2025) written & directed by Filippo Capuzzi Lapietra
Producer: Stefano Capuzzi Lapietra / DOP: Ted Abel Pedro / Shooting Board: Tadeu Knudsen / Sound Recording: Márcio Farah / Composer: Lou Schimdt/ Camera Operator: Luciano Maciel / Editorsa: Deotex. Filippo Capuzzi Lapietra, Pedro Andreta, Taly Blinder and Saulo Simão/
A Walkin Brothers Film
Cast:
Professor Nelson Akerman / Stefano Capuzzi Lapietra/ Tadeu Knudsen / Fernando Tiezzi/ Guilherme de Oliveira/ Ted Abel/ Ariel Wollinger and Deoclécio Teixeira / Mrs Noiara /
