Set against the backdrop of mile-long roads, neighborhood blocks, abandoned factories and lakes which make up Metro-Detroit, this story follows four young people as they search for love and adventure on the last night of summer: Maggie, Rob, Claudia and S
A baby will be born from a summer night and something must be done. The protagonist is up for the task and catches a plane from Portugal to Canada, so he can be near the mother of his child. The scenario he finds on his arrival is almost laughable: a monotone and indecisive pregnant woman, an apathetic boyfriend, a hostile city. The most heartbreaking of all winters is in Winnipeg, says Ryan McKenna, who wanted to film Portugal precisely by opposing it to the icy solitude of Canada. Kaurismaki would see here some of his humor without the least of compassion. (M. M.)
Kim and Bill live in Baltimore and are splitting up by the time Abby, their daughter, a college student, comes home for the vacation. Bill and Kim are surprised by the visit of their niece, Taryn, runing away from her parents’ house in Northern Ireland. After Putty Hill, screened in IndieLisboa in 2010, Matthew Porterfield returns with I Used To Be Darker, a film that sensitively portrays human relationships within an American family and that proves the talent of a filmmaker in full command of a contemporary narrative cinema that has no pudency about fetching documentary devices ‚ real décors and non-professional actors ‚ to tell us, with vividness and accuracy, the reality in which we live. I see real people that I love, Porterfield wrote about the film. The emotions predominate, the stories are about people we love, the songs are there to be listened to. (C. C.)
Within the rural country, a man tries to understand the strange phenomenon that is happening in his body. The old grandmother, the bird in the cage and the almost inhospitable landscape cover him like a fog that allows him no certainties. A fiction about the stories that are created when reality is too harsh to be addressed. (P. C.)
In New York, 48 hours is more than enough to plan and execute a beautiful revenge and ruin the reputation of a rival ‘gang’ in an epic fashion. Not the same scenario from Do the Right Thing, but it could be. After all, between Spike Lee’s Bed-Stuy and Adam Leon’s The Bronx, where Malcolm and Sofia come from, there are not many differences. They are just two grafitters who need $500 to execute a genius plan. Whether in the Bronx or in Manhattan, you can’t get this amount of money without some missteps, but it is all worth it to get into the Mets’ stadium and paint the big apple. So naive and natural, like its protagonists, this first work brings together an incredible subtext: a city stratified horizontally and vertically, growing from the clash between various layers. (M. M.)
Gingers. Redheads. Fire crotches… Recessive gene. They have alluring traits, the ones that get them bullied or draws us to them. Because they’re different they have had to put up with a lot. This has made them strong, stronger than you might expect for men who are doubly in a minority (gay and gingers). This film collects samples of their testimonials and their DNA (skin, hair and sperm). (Antonio da Silva)
Film of memories about friendship. Through a variety of kaleidoscopic photographs, films and sound recordings of the time, we track the life and work of Joe Brainard, from the 50s to 90. Matt Wolf uses Brainard’s poem I remember” in a sublime way, to compose a nostalgic evocation of a time and a rather extraordinary life. (M. V.)
The duo Reis/Miller knows very well how to detect a universe to work on. Their films transport us to pronounced social realities and focus on the accurate stressing of what is most important. In this film-experiment, where they themselves are pushed to the process, we see a group of Brazilian women talk about large andminor issues. (M. V.)
In a neighborhood constantly under construction, Irene, a grandmother who lives with her granddaughters, gets to know a neighbor through the window that the building demolished wouldn’t let her see before. He makes golden mesh, a delicate work in the midst of so much destruction. By observing his daily activities, Irene approaches him without his knowledge. Golden Mesh is a beautiful mosaic of a narrative of enveloping tenderness. (R. F.)
With no place to call home, 19-year-old Elena takes a job as a live-in aide. She finds herself thrust into the middle of a family in crisis: all the things that go on between a father, grandmother, mother, and cat. Eventually, Elena strikes something of a balance though… That is, until the prodigal son returns home. Placing fictional characters alongside real people, ‚ÄòExit Elena’ is shot through with all the rough edges inherent to family life and home movie form ‚ in short, it’s a dark comedy.
Within Walls describes us the details of the daily routines of a couple. The gestures and actions of the two, a silent dance mechanized by habit, are witnessed by the house that welcomes them and also gives them life, light, space, and the time which records them. (R. F.)
The myth of the wild child is revisited in this animation, through a sober work of color and movement. Where does the man and the animal begin? The moral superiority isn’t always in school playgrounds where children can be confused with wolves. And taking home creatures of the woods may or may not be the right solution. (P. C.)
It is said that men are inattentive, looking out for themselves and little or nothing else. A bourgeois society is the mirror of a greater reality. The ones on a leash are the ones who see, those not authorized to speak, bark. But when misfortune happens don’t expect miracles. Parente is a filmmaker of a new Brazilian generation looking at middle class in a sharp and accurate way. (M. V.)
In the ’80s, a group of computer programmers of chess software passes the weekend in a tournament competition in their field. Recreating the atmosphere of the world of informatics and its professionals and hobbyists, the director of Mutual Appreciation and Beeswax returns to IndieLisboa, with a very peculiar film that is considered, until now, his deeper and more intuitive project. To recreate the aesthetic image of the early ’80s, Bujalski used an old video camera, managing to recreate in a faithful and humorous way the situations experienced by participants in the computer chess tournament. More than a playful tournament, it is a competition between technology and the human spirit that is at stake. (C. C.)
He used to say the film began with a very slow and soft camera, a delicate zoom, and advanced in search of Barbot. (Allan Ribeiro)
Six friends meet every evening in a basement to make music. Rita left Ricardo, Rafael found her, but she still feels lost. Eduardo thought he no longer liked Maria, but after what he has done he cannot turn the clock back. João lacks the courage to break
Clélia lives alone in her big house and spends her time taking care of the cat and the flowers in the garden. Her world is ineluctably shrinking as the few people calling her on the phone are so selfish she prefers to stop answering. Hopefully her not-as-
Liberty is young and he dreams of the future. Besides him, a beautiful Chinese. But it misses only something for perfection. Gabriel Abrantes, once again with Benjamin Crotty, explores ironic and poetically a dispirited universe, in which the boats that l