FICTION NATIONAL FEATURE FILMS

A MONTE | ON THE RUN

Portugal | 26’00’’ | 2020

Realizadora|Director: Mariana Guarda

Elenco|Cast: Rita Rocha Silva, Fernando Nobre, Mário Coelho, Rita Silvestre, Rodrigo Tomás e Teresa Moreira

Produção |Production: Emma Saints


Synopsis

Summer. Five friends go on a road trip through the coast of Alentejo. Rita decides to meet with someone from her past. There begins a path that can bring her some answers.

Biography

Mariana Guarda is an actress and director, based in Lisbon, Portugal. Graduated in Film Production at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School in 2013. In 2015 she directed the documentary film Já Voa a Palavra Casa, about a group of people suffering from mental illness who live in a community in the city center of Setúbal. Later, in 2018, she graduated in Acting at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School. Looking for new forms to communicate her ideas, she writes and develops projects in the fields of theatre and performance. Recently wrote and directed her first short film, On the Run (A Monte).                

ALMA | SOUL

Portugal | 07’53’’ | 2020

Realizadora|Director: Mónica Santos

Elenco|Cast: Analícia Graça 

Produção|Production: ​​Portugal Fashion

Synopsis:

A poetic expedition, where a wanderer looks for her soul mate, solely to find it close to her.

Biography

Mónica Santos is a multifaceted author who has two Sophia awards, by the Portuguese Film Academy, and a nomination for César, by the French Academy, in her cinematographic journey. With a unique artistic vision, she creates universes that reinvent the real, giving them a poetic and surreal outlook that disturbs our perception. After finishing her master's degree at the Royal College of Art, as a Gulbenkian fellow, she worked with exponents of Portuguese cinema such as Manoel de Oliveira and José Fonseca e Costa as well as in several genres: cinema, advertising, documentary, and television fiction. The last two short films Amélia & Duarte and Between the Shadows (co-directed) connect animation techniques with real image aesthetics, distinguishing itself by the awards it received nationally and internationally. The culmination of this accomplishment was the chance to represent Portuguese cinema on the tour of the world cinema academies “Les Nuits en Or”. She finished her first solo short film Palma and is working, among other artistic projects, on the film O Casaco Rosa.         

CAROLINE

Portugal | 24'00’’ | 2020

Realizadora|Director: Patrícia Vidal Delgado

Elenco|Cast: Rachel Rath, Terrance Richardson, Ron Freedman, Paul Uhler, Rita Barkett

Produção |Production: UCLA TFT,  Jessica Moore

Synopsis

A professional artist is on the brink of failure as she struggles with self-doubt and the resignation of her new assistant just before her first solo show.

Biography

Patrícia Vidal Delgado is the screenwriter and director of the short films Bué Sabi, Isa, Ico, 88, The Hood, and Caroline. Her work has been selected for several national and international festivals, including IndieLisboa, Curtas Vila do Conde, TIFF Next Wave, and the Philadelphia Film Festival. Patricia's films have already received fifteen awards and fifty nominations. La Leyenda Negra, her first feature film, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2020.

CHAMA-SE CARLA | HER NAME IS CARLA

Portugal | 11’28’’ | 2020 

Realizadora|Director: Cátia Biscaia

Elenco|Cast: Inês Sá Frias, Tobias Monteiro, Ricardo Tê, Jorge Bernardes

Produção|Production: Cátia Biscaia, Bruno Carnide, Eduardo M. Escribano Solera, Paulo Graça, Pedro Caldeira

Synopsis

With her boyfriend arrested for drug dealing, Carla, 6 months pregnant, spends her days at the jail door. As the days go by, an unlikely relationship eventually emerges, putting everything in question.

Biography

Cátia Biscaia (1983, Leiria, Portugal) has a postgraduate degree in Audiovisual and Multimedia from the Lisbon School of Media. Professional photographer - awarded nationally and internationally - and university lecturer in the field of Image, she also works in the area of Cinema, as Director of Leiria Film Fest (International Short Film Festival), producer and image assistant for award-winning films such as: Hushed. Left. Jumped, Fled. Lay. Fell, Manuel (directed by Bruno Carnide), among others. Her name is Carla is her first work as a director.

EXTRACTION: THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA | EXTRACTION: THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA

Portugal | 10’43’’ | 2020 

Realizadora|Director: Salomé Lamas

Elenco|Cast: Henrique Furtado, Luis Guerra, Matthieu Ehrlacher, João Villas Boas, Cláudio Vieira, Bruno Brandolino, Filipe Pereira, Paulo Quedas

Produção|Production: Salomé Lamas, Adelina von Furstenberg, Pedro Duarte

Synopsis:

Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa is a meditation on humanity’s massive redesign of the planet and a dystopic pamphlet on the anthropocene. Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa portrays a brief moment of euphoria as the drifting occupants on the raft, hoping and praying to be rescued, appear to glimpse a possibility of salvation. We can almost hear the hoarse cries through which they attempt to draw attention to their desperate plight, mustering a final ounce of strength before the void. This is their last chance of survival. Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa refers to the colonial paradigm, worldview, and technologies that mark out regions of high biodiversity in order to reduce life to its conversion into a resource through capitalism, with an enormous environmental and social impact. It is an allegory for states of emergency in environmental policy, climate and migration, with an ethical-political purpose.

Biografia:

Salomé Lamas (Lisbon) studied cinema in Lisbon and Prague, visual arts in Amsterdam and is a Ph.D candidate in contemporary art studies in Coimbra. Her work has been screened both in art venues and film festivals such as Berlinale, BAFICI, Museo Arte Reina Sofia, FIAC, MNAC – Museu do Chiado, DocLisboa, Cinema du Réel, Visions du Réel, MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Harvard Film Archive, Museum of Moving Images NY, Jewish Museum NY, Fid Marseille, Arsenal Institut fur film und videokunst, Viennale, Culturgest, CCB - Centro Cultural de Belém, Hong Kong FF, Museu Serralves, Tate Modern, CPH: DOX, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Genève, Bozar, Tabakalera, ICA London, TBA 21 Foundation, Mostra de São Paulo, CAC Vilnius, MALBA, FAEMA, SESC São Paulo, MAAT, La Biennale di Venezia Architettura, among others. Lamas was granted several fellowships such as the Gardner Film Study Center Fellowship – Harvard University, The Rockefeller Foundation – Bellagio Center, Brown Foundation – Dora Maar House, Fundación Botín, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Sundance, Bogliasco Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD. She collaborates with Universidade Católica Portuguesa and Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola. She collaborates with the production company O Som e a Fúria and is represented by Galeria Miguel Nabinho and Kubikgallery.

MADRUGADA | DAWN

Portugal | 28’00’’ | 2021 

Realizadora|Director: Leonor Noivo

Elenco|Cast: Isabel Costa, Alexandra Espiridião, Ana Teresa Magalhães, Lilia Trajano

Produção|Production: João Matos, Leonor Noivo, Luísa Homem, Pedro Pinho, Tiago Hespanha, Susana Nobre, Terratreme Filmes

Synopsis:

Maria starts to show signs of wanting to belong somewhere else: scales appear on her skin, roots appear on her legs, and she hears the sound of water - she dreams of being a fish. One day her daughter comes across her disappearance and reconstructs, through the memory of her gestures and meetings with her mother, a possible explanation for her escape.

Biography:

Leonor Noivo studied Architecture and Photography before joining Lisbon’s Film School, where she specialized in Editing and Directing in 2004. She attended the Ateliers Varan Documentary Filmmaking course in 2006 at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. Since then she works as script-supervisor, scriptwriter and assistant director in documentaries and fiction films and collaborated with several directors (such as João Pedro Rodrigues, João Salaviza, João Nicolau, Marília Rocha, Pedro Pinho, Tiago Hespanha, João Vladimiro, João Botelho, Carlos Conceição, Inês Oliveira, Filipa Reis and João Miller, among others). She collaborated with several creators in the performance area, creating content and video installations, as well as Film-Project workshops in ArCo’s, ESMAD's and ESAD’s Cinema Courses. She is co-founder of the production company TERRATREME Filmes, a platform of filmmakers created in 2008, where she has developed, alongside her films, the work as a producer in coordination and monitoring of fiction and documentary projects.

NHA MILA

Portugal | 18’28’’ | 2020 

Realizadora|Director: Denise Fernandes

Elenco|Cast: Yaya Correia, Maria Sanches, Cleo Tavares, Lourença Semedo 

Produção|Production: Sandro Aguilar, Luis Urbano, Elda Guidinetti

Synopsis:

After 14 years away from her homeland, Salomé is forced to return to Cape Verde to see her dying brother. During her stopover at Lisbon airport, Águeda, a cleaning lady, recognizes Salomé as "Mila", her childhood friend. Águeda invites Salomé to leave the airport and spend the stopover at her home, with the women of her family. The neighborhood transports her on a spiritual journey, whose destination unfurls a painful bond with her homeland.

Biography:

Denise Fernandes was born in Lisbon in 1990 from Cape Verdean parents and she was raised in southern Switzerland. In 2011 she graduated in film directing and production at the International Conservatory of Audiovisual Sciences in Lugano (CISA). In the same year, her diploma short film Una Notte debuted at the 64th edition of the Locarno FILM Festival. From 2011 to 2013, she studies filmmaking at Cuba's International School of Film and TV (EICTV), where she directs Pan Sin Mermelada, which deserves the nomination of Upcoming Talent at the Solothurn Festival and Idyllium, awarded at the Winterthur International Festival. She is currently preparing her first feature film, Hanami, set in Cape Verde. Hanami was selected from 70 projects for the Solothurn Talent Lab 2016 and awarded the Best First Project by the Swiss Society of Authors (SSA).

UPSTREAM

Portugal | 20’52’’ | 2019

Realizadora|Director: Adriana Martins da Silva

Elenco|Cast: Joana Brandão, Whirimako Black, Paul Ubana Jones, Mark Kilsby, Lyric Winitana

Produção|Production: Adriana Martins da Silva, Joanna Spence, Catarina Souto, Corey LeVaillant

Synopsis

Mariana, a Portuguese woman who migrated to New Zealand, finds her life woven with Tui, her Māori neighbour. A film about leaving and living, and all the threads in between.

Biography

Adriana Martins da Silva was born in Portugal in 1983. She studied astrophysics in Porto and lived for seven years in New Zealand where she worked as a hospital physicist for several years. At the same time, she began to develop her film career as an independent director. Her short films, known for their intimate and emotional portraits centered on the female, have already won several national awards. Her film The Language was nominated for the Sophia Awards in 2018. Upstream is her most personal film, inspired by her experience as an emigrant in New Zealand. An interweaving of experiences and cultures unfolded in front and behind the screen.