Astral City: A Spiritual Journey

Astral City: A Spiritual Journey (also known as Nosso Lar) is a 2010 Brazilian drama film directed by Wagner de Assis, based on the book of the same name by the medium Francisco Cândido Xavier. It is distributed by 20th Century Fox and features a soundtrack composed by Philip Glass.

Andre Luiz, the main character of the story, is played by Renato Prieto. He shares the screen with well-known actors and actresses of Brazilian television drama such as Othon Bastos, Ana Rosa and Paulo Goulart, among others. It was shot on location in Rio de Janeiro and Brasília during the months of July, August and September 2009 and took 9 months to complete post-production. It was released on September 3, 2010 in Brazil to great critical acclaim and more than one million viewers in its opening weekend.

Production

Origins

The film is an adaptation of the 1944 book of the same name, said to be dictated by the spirit Andre Luiz and psychographed by Chico Xavier, Brazil's best-known and respected medium, having channeled more than 400 books. The book is considered a great classic of spiritist literature. Engaging the reader from a first-person narrative, Andre Luiz delivers his impressions of the spirit world he encounters after his death.

Nosso Lar

Nosso Lar (Our Home in Portuguese) is the best-selling novel by the Brazilian spiritist medium Francisco Cândido Xavier. Published in 1943, the book tells the story of the spirit of André Luiz, a prominent doctor who lived in the city of Rio de Janeiro. After dying, André Luiz encounters neither the Heaven nor the Hell depicted in the teachings he had received during his Catholic upbringing. Rather, he initially has to endure a period in the so-called umbral, a region where less-than-perfect souls face the consequences of their infelicitous actions while alive. After a while, André Luiz is able to perceive the presence of Clarêncio, a friendly spirit who had been trying to help him all along during his stay in the umbral. Clarêncio then takes André Luiz to Nosso Lar, a spirit colony, or astral city, where André becomes acquainted with the intricacies of afterlife and reincarnation.

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