I Went to Check On You Sleep

Aldir Blanc wrote notes to his wife, Mari, over the course of 34 years. Mari filmed the family.

Thirty-five years in the life of a couple, told through 2,000 notes and family photographs. Love, jealousy, pain, resilience, and death, reflected upon by Aldir Blanc, the creator of some of the most beautiful lyrics in Brazilian popular music — including “O Bêbado e a Equilibrista” (“The Drunkard and the Tightrope Walker”), written for his wife, Mari Lúcia. Six years after Aldir’s death, the notes continue to emerge, hidden inside objects throughout the couple’s apartment in Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca neighborhood. Mari revisits forgotten moments and opens the moving treasure trove of notes in the year Aldir — who died of COVID-19 in 2020 — would have turned 80.