The idea attached to this program specially designed to Regard sur le Court Métrage au Saguenay is to screen Portuguese shorts from some of the most relevant filmmakers IndieLisboa helped to discover. Ten years ago, they say in Portugal, a new generation of talents pointed news ways for our cinema. They are doing nowadays feature films, some of them with a lot of recognition, namely Miguel Gomes (with Tabu or Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto) or João Pedro Rodrigues (with To Die like a Man, Odete or The Last Time I Saw Macau). But never like today the Portuguese shorts had such a recognition in the big festivals.
Since 2009, and after winning IndieLisboa, João Salaviza received the Golden Palm in Cannes for Best Short film and in 2012 he added the Golden Bear in Berlin with Rafa and Gabriel Abrantes won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2010 and was in competition in 2012 in Venice Film Festival (Orizontti). So, we can hope for big things in the future for these really newcomers.
Besides Rafa and Liberdade, from Salaviza and Abrantes, the programme is constituted also by two first films (Carne by Carlos Conceição and Barba by Paulo Abreu), that won awards at IndieLisboa Film Festival and after had the chance to travel internationally, giving to his directors international attention. All the films are a little bit crazy, but Portuguese cinematography is wild, temper and has lots of new ideas.
So Portugal and IndieLisboa are pretty excited to present this Portuguese Program of Short Films in Québec, to a completely new audience to our films and we feel good things are about to happen.
Image: Rafa by João Salaviza