Bacurau (Portuguese for 'nightjar'; [bɐkuˈɾaw]) is a 2019 surreal Weird Western film written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. Starring Sônia Braga, Udo Kier, Bárbara Colen, Thomas Aquino, Silvero Pereira and Karine Teles, it revolves around the fictional small town of Bacurau, in the Brazilian sertão, that is beset by strange happenings following the death of its matriarch Carmelita (Lia de Itamaracá) at the age of 94.

The film had its world premiere at the main competition of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival on 15 May, where it won the Jury Prize. It was theatrically released in Brazil on 29 August by Vitrine Filmes, and in France on 25 September by SBS Distribution.

In the near future, the people of Bacurau, an impoverished, rural settlement in the fictional municipality of Serra Verde, in western Pernambuco, gather for the funeral of Carmelita, an elderly woman seen as the matriarch of the community. Her granddaughter Teresa, now a young woman, returns to town after many years for the occasion, and to deliver some medicine. In the following days, the village experiences a sequence of strange events, including the town inexplicably disappearing from online maps and satellite images, loss of mobile phone signal, sightings of a UFO-shaped drone and an unnamed couple from southern Brazil passing through town on motorcycles.

There is an ongoing dispute over water rights from the local river, with water being dammed upstream in a corrupt scheme masterminded by the wealthy mayor of Serra Verde, Tony Junior. He visits Bacurau in an attempt to secure its residents' votes in an upcoming election with old food and tattered books, but no water; the townspeople all hide to avoid him. A tanker truck of water finally arrives for the town, but it has been riddled with bullets.

When horses stampede through town, two local men are sent to investigate the nearby farm from where they presumably escaped and find the family that owned it murdered. As they attempt to leave the property, they too are murdered, by the southern motorcyclists. This couple then meets again up with a group of mostly American foreigners led by Michael (a German living in the United States for over 40 years). The couple is chastised for killing the two men, as killing them deprived the foreigners of two chances to score "points." After receiving unheard instructions through earpieces, the foreigners kill the couple and then argue over who earned the points for their deaths.

The foreigners begin hunting the townspeople, and Pacote, Teresa's former lover, seeks out Lunga, a revolutionary protecting and being sheltered by the townspeople. Pacote convinces Lunga to join his fight against the foreigners. As the townspeople arm themselves, the foreigners kill a nine-year-old boy and cut off the town's electricity.

The following morning, as the foreigners go hunting, they are gradually overpowered and killed by the locals, with the exception of Michael, who ends up captured. Tony Junior shows up to collect the foreigners in a luxury minibus. When he sees that the townspeople have won, he denies knowing the foreigners until the captured Michael yells to him for help. The mayor is sent away to die in the desert, half-naked and tied up to a donkey, while Michael is buried alive in an underground cell while shouting "this is only the beginning."

Bacurau was filmed in the village of Barra in the municipality of Parelhas and in the rural area of the municipality of Acari, at the Sertão do Seridó region, in Rio Grande do Norte, with scenes shot in the Gargalheiras dam. The film crew visited over 20 cities in the Northeast countryside to find the appropriate filming location. The crew shot 12-hour days for 8 weeks.