Living together in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, lesbian couple Jurema and Nicinha have been together for 43 years. They are one of the six couples featured in the new Netflix docuseries My Love: Six Stories of True Love. The series tells the true love stories of six elderly couples from the countries of Spain, Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil and the United States. Each couple was filmed for an entire year for the project.
Jurema says she met Nicinha at a samba party when she was 14 years old. Jurema was 20. She says Nicinha caught her attention because she got into a fight that night.
“I thought that was interesting,” Jurema says. “I said, ‘How could this young girl fiercely take on so many people?’”
Soon after, Nicinha moved in with Jurema to help her take care of her four kids. “We’ve been living together ever since,” Jurema says.
Jurema and Nicinha’s hour-long episode takes viewers into their lives where filmmaker Carolina Sá captures them celebrating Jurema’s 65th birthday, spending time with their grandkids, practicing religious traditions and managing Jurema’s health. Jurema needs surgery, but her doctor won’t refer her for it because her glucose levels are too high. Her family tells her that diet and exercise are the only things that will help her control it.
“She will die inside the house then,” one of Jurema’s daughter’s jokes. “If I buy you a treadmill, will you exercise while you drink beer?”
It’s when Jurema and Nicinha talk about their dreams to build a new home and then slowly start to do it that My Love really confirms how devoted the couple is to one another. It’s an experience they want to share.
“I always tell Jurema that dreams are built little by little,” Nicinha says. “Our house in Rocinha, we built it ourselves. And now we’re building this other house, where we want to grow old – right here…on this land.”
My Love: Six Stories of True Love is currently streaming on Netflix.