A heartening return to Pedro Costa’s painterly cinema of hope and hopelessness – we go rabbit hunting with Ventura, thinking of Cape Verde.
’Is there space for a green garden?’ ‘Not even for a house’. We revisit Fontainhas, thinking of Cape Verde, the country to which José Alberto Silva will be deported but which he’s never seen before. This is controlled, hypnotic cinema, moving between life and death, reality and fiction. –IFFR
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
There should be an "Need to see" button for films like this. Or perhaps an "I would kill Xavier Dolans mother to see this film" button.
