João lives in São Paulo. He goes through a series of encounters with people like his long-time friend Irene; his boyfriend Álvaro; Matias, a young man he meets in the subway and has a sexual experience with, among others, some acquainted, some unknown.
Less than two hundred feet away from the prison cell of the world’s most famous political prisoner, a vigil group follows the outcome of the most important presidential elections of the last 30 years in Brazil.
After the austere revision of the historical film in the previous Jeanne la pucelle (1994), Rivette conceived Haut bas fragile under the sign of musical cinema. “Inspiration? MGM’s low budget films of the fifties, shot in four or five weeks, using sets left by other films; in particular a Stanley Donen film called Give a Girl a Break“(Rivette). Here is a film with a group of girls, songs and dance numbers. Anna Karina’s special starring suggests that Haut bas fragile also intended to evoke the “Nouvelle Vague spirit”. (Cinemateca Portuguesa)
Telling the story of a French deserter who joins a Swiss far-right group, from which he later tries to flee for the love of a woman, Le petit soldat was one of Godard’s most controversial films, accused at the time of “fascism” by part of the official left and banned in France for three years, for the many allusions to the Algerian War, then at its peak. It is also the film of Godard’s first encounter with Anna Karina, who every time she enters the scene steals all the light around her. And the film of the celebrated aphorism that comes from a speech about photography, cinema and the truth: “”Photography is truth. Cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” (Cinemateca Portuguesa)
Rivette’s second feature adapts Diderot’s homonymous novel about a young woman who is obliged to go to a convent. Before it was even directed, the film unleashed a cabal of conservative politicians, who banned it, resulting in a huge scandal. It was authorized only after the title changed to Simone Simonin, la religieuse de Denis Diderot, although no one ever referred to it as such. Very different from the style that Rivette would adopt from L’amour fou (1969), rigorous and rarefied, extremely “written”, La religieuse has an exceptional performance of Anna Karina in the leading role. (Cinemateca Portuguesa)
Visconti worked on the adaptation of Camus’s novel (The Stranger, 1942) seduced by the possibility of drawing a contemporary political fresco centered on the end of French colonization in Algeria, a version that Camus widow made impossible, requiring the book to be scrupulously followed. Visconti remained faithful to the production commitments and filmed Lo straniero but lost his interest in the project, not only due to the pressure of Francine Camus and the producer Dino de Laurentiis, but also because the actor with whom he wanted to work, Alain Delon, gave up and was replaced by Mastroianni, alongside Anna Karina. For many, Lo straniero is a failed Visconti. Others praise the first part, shot under the Algerian sun. (Cinemateca Portuguesa)
Some friends go on vacation to a beach house located on a small and secluded island. While the rest of the group hangs out, Karina feels like there’s something out of place. Something lurks them all, silently dragging their fates to a horrendous death.
1992. The last heirs of a traditional family from the state of Minas Gerais mysteriously disappear. 2017. A box with VHS tapes reveals homemade records of their last days on the family’s farm.
One night, Rafael came home to discover that some people were looking for him. He fled, without looking back, and his life changed.
A female director, during a midlife crisis, has her heart divided between two women.
This is an highly staged biographical documentary where legend and fact merge into Marcelo Diorio’s character, the host of his open anus and his past lives. Here his traumas (abuses and HIV) become tragicomedy and his subversive charm leaves no one indifferent.
In WWII, Lieut. Martino and his men are assigned to lead a group of prostitutes through the mountainous ways to serve in brothels for Italian soldiers in Albania.
Combining unprecedented access to Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, with accounts of her own family’s complex political and industrial past, Petra Costa witnesses their rise and fall and the tragically polarized nation that remains.
In order to take on a new job at the public sanitation department, Juliana moves to the town of Contagem in Brazil. While waiting for her husband to join her, she meets new people and discovers new horizons, trying to overcome her past.
Based on the homonymous tale by Heinrich Von Kleist (1810) from a true story (from the mid-sixteenth century), admired by writers like Goethe and Kafka thanks to Kleist’s powerful book, Volker Schlöndorff’s film focuses on the titular character. Horse dealer Michael Kohlhaas (David Warner) is forced to pay a tax to an aristocrat discovering that he was deceived, which leads him to exacerbate an innate sense of justice. Anna Karina plays the character of his wife, Elizabeth. (Cinemateca Portuguesa)
Written, directed, produced and starred by Anna Karina, Vivre ensemble (which was to be called Nous deux) is the actress’ directing debut. A conjugal portrait of the 70’s imbued with the spirit of time, in the Parisian and New York spaces of Saint-Germain-des-Près and the Latin Quarter, Harlem and Greenwich Village. Filmed in 16mm in four weeks with a small budget and difficulties inherent to being directed by a woman (and a woman-actress), the film is composed of six parts. It distils a realism punctuated by melancholy and the burlesque, in which the female protagonist lives her life decidedly. (Cinemateca Portuguesa)
During a visit to Flavia at her new apartment, Francisco opens up about his body image issues.
A film essay that finds parallels between the 2014 World Cup and the Brazilian political situation.