Simon Calls

Composed of three chapters and filmed over five years, encompassing different formats, Simon Chama deals with the protagonist’s response to his parents’ divorce and how it shapes his future.

In a back and forth movement between the past and the present, Marta Sousa Ribeiro presents us with her first feature film. Simon is the bittersweet moment of adolescence, where freedom has a name on it and never seems enough. Where car journeys are endless and siblings unbearable. Where we are alright where we are not, the being beyond. The eternal daydreaming of those who grow up outside the big city, and where wonderful trips are only those that fly inside our heads. Simon Calls is a dance of image formats that transport us from the 90’s to the present, and remind us of the beautiful and cruel rite of passage that is being a teenager. (Inês Lima Torres)

Director's Bio

Marta Sousa Ribeiro was born in Lisbon in 1992. In 2011, she interrupted her Cinema course in Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema to enrol in Drawing and Painting at Ar.Co. She directed her first short film in the same year, AmareloAzulPretoAmarelo. In 2014, she co-founded a cinema and video production company, Videolotion, where she produced director Pedro Cabeleira’s Verão Danado (2017). She directed the fifth episode of the Subsolo web series and was, among others, executive producer in the feature film Ama Romanta by Vasco Bação, part of the IndieLisboa 2019 programme.