Our Madness begins in an asylum and we settle in João Viana’s cinema, which is as dreamlike as it is mythological. Following the work he did in his first feature film, A Batalha de Tabatô (IndieLisboa 2013), the director follows Ernania’s drift through Mozambique, while she looks for her husband and son.
Sol Carvalho’s Mabata Bata, which also takes place in the African continent, is an adaptation of Mia Couto’s The Day Mabata-Bata Exploded. Also in the realm of literature, the special shorts screening, dedicated to poet and writer Fernando Pessoa, will also be a highlight of the festival, with Julia Buisel’s How Many Times Have You Dreamt about Me? and Luís Alves de Matos’s The Passenger.
Meanwhile, in Évora, we will take a look at 81 year old sculptor João Cutileiro’s work, with Flesh and Stone, directed by Graça Castanheiro. In the same city, we follow the discovery of Lisbon by artist Faustin Linyekula, through the work he developed in 2017 with the students of ESTC and the various shows he presented in the main cultural venues of the capital, in Miguel Muchá’s Nunca as Minhas Mãos Ficam Vazias.
Under the Sky, by Nicholas Oulman, traces a story about the exodus that forced millions of Jews to head south when Hitler’s time came. Based on the memories of some survivors (now in their eighties), this is a film that describes the memories of a refugee crisis that found (for over 100,000 people) a safe haven in Portugal. Last but not least, it is worth mentioning Sandro Aguilar’s intriguing cinema sprinkled with science fiction elements, in Mariphasa.