MUBI brings you a great new film every day.  Start your 7-day free trial today!
Watch a new film every day for $4.99.
Try MUBI for FREE.
 

Colossal Youth

Juventude em Marcha

Portugal, France, Switzerland

2006

156 Min
Color, Black and White
1.33:1
Portuguese
  • Currently 4.4/5 Stars.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

   |   

DIR Pedro Costa

PROD Francisco Villa-Lobos, Philippe Avril, Andres Pfäffli, Elda Guidinetti

SCR Pedro Costa

DP Pedro Costa, Leonardo Simões

CAST Ventura, Vanda Duarte, Paula Barrulas, Cila Cardoso, Silva 'Nana' Alexandre, Alberto 'Lento' Barros, Beatriz Duarte, Paulo Nunes, Gustavo Sumpta, António 'Pango' Semedo, José Maria Pina

ED Pedro Marques

SOUND Olivier Blanc, Vasco Pedroso, Jean-Pierre Laforce

Toronto (Visions), Cannes (In Competition), San Francisco (World Cinema), São Paulo

Synopsis

Many of the lost souls of Ossos and In Vanda’s Room return in the spectral landscape of Colossal Youth, which brings to Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas films a new theatrical, tragic grandeur. This time, Costa focuses on Ventura, an elderly immigrant from Cape Verde living in a low-cost housing complex in Lisbon, who has been abandoned by his wife and spends his days visiting his neighbors, whom he considers his “children.” What results is a form of ghost story, a tale of derelict, dispossessed people living in the past and present at the same time, filmed by Costa with empathy and startling radiance. —The Criterion Collection

Director

Original

Pedro Costa

Pedro Costa (born 1959) is a Portuguese film director. He is acclaimed for using his ascetic style to depict the marginalised people in desperate living situations. Many of his films are set in a district of Lisbon inhabited by the socially disadvantaged and shot in a natural and low-key way that makes them resemble documentaries. While studying history at University of Lisbon, Costa switched to film courses at School of Theatre and Cinema (Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema). After working as an assistant director to several directors such as Jorge Silva Melo and João Botelho, he made a first feature film O Sangue (The Blood) in 1989. He collected the France Culture Award (Foreign Cineaste of the Year) at 2002 Cannes International Film Festival for directing the film No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda’s Room). Juventude em Marcha (Youth on the March, known as “Colossal Youth” in Anglophone countries, and “En avant, jeunesse” – “Onward, Youth” – in Francophone countries) was selected for… read more

Wall

Displaying 4 of 21 wall posts.
Picture of Judicial Joe

Judicial Joe

21Mar13

A mess of a film. This lives up to every stereotype about what contemplative cinema is - it's unnecessarily slow, vague as to its artistic and narrative intentions, and frankly quite boring. I'm very disappointed considering this is supposed to be Costa's best work.

tomas.roges likes this

  • Picture of Joks

    Joks

    22Mar13

    You couldn't be more wrong Joe imo. It's one of the few standout originals in C.C today. Nobody makes films like Costa

Picture of răpciune

răpciune

11Jan13

even when on dope, a woman is still a woman: she wants new furniture, small white tables with panes of striped glass :)). or is it meta-womanhood - she is aware of this cliche in female behaviour and uses it with her husband, to enhance the credibility of her claims, to show him she is back to normal female whims and to fool him into pawning or selling the old furniture. but not to get new one, normally, haha.

Insane Reverb and Johnde like this

  • Picture of răpciune

    răpciune

    11Jan13

    happily, it's a long time since the man got used to the trickstress' ways. the film is almost as bleak and hopeless as fliegauf's dealer, but with surprinsingly luminous inserts.

Picture of Tomás Paula

Tomás Paula

2Dec12

Pedro Costa demonstra o lugar em que realmente habitamos. A triologia "Carta das Fontainhas" apresenta-nos este "mundo" de uma forma crua, de uma forma que nos é necessária observar. De um mundo que estará sempre presente mas deixado no esquecimento.

Picture of HP Hovercraft

HP Hovercraft

17Nov12

"But most of all... drink a bottle of good wine and think of me."

chanandre and Miguel Ferreira like this

Related Films

Fans

Displaying 5 of 301 fans.

Articles

Our roundup of essays and articles on this film.
W184

Some Violence Is Required: A Conversation With Pedro Costa

By David Jenkins on March 11, 2013

The Portuguese maestro talks digital, film and DCP, early influences and teachers, David Fincher and filmmaking now.

read article
W184

Image of the Day. Records of Material Objects in the Cinema #1

By Daniel Kasman on May 1, 2010

A chair from Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth (2006); cinematography by Pedro Costa and Leonardo Simões.

read article
W184

Pedro Costa, Midnight Eye, ND/NF

By David Hudson on March 30, 2010

"For a small group of diligent cinephiles, Criterion's Letters From Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa is one of the most anticipated

read article
W184

The Auteurs Daily: NYFF. Ne change rien

By David Hudson on October 20, 2009

"Like his earlier documentary, Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? on seminal filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at work on Sicilia

read article
W184

The Auteurs Daily: Sight & Sound, Costa & Criterion

By David Hudson on September 26, 2009

The Pedro Costa retrospective currently underway at the Tate Modern (through October 4) occasions two pieces in the new issue of Sight &

read article

Lists

Displaying 5 of 127 lists.

Reviews

Displaying 2 of 2

Epic, angular shots

By Kelvane on October 10, 2010

Epic shots encapsulate this picture like a fine crystal prism. The way Pedro Costa films ‘Juventude em Marcha’ is brave, unusual, angular, and frequently gnarly. While his characters sit and…  read review

Untitled

By Dave McDouga​ll on November 3, 2008

an epochal achievement: a film whose eloquence on memory is matched only by the heights of Chris Marker, a criticism of a present political situation, a stinging critique of the legacy of colonialism…  read review

Forum

Displaying 2 discussion topics.

Why is Colossal Youth not available on netflix...

26 posts by 12 people over 2 years ago

Boomtown Babylon

2 posts by 2 people about 3 years ago