UPRISE , that premiered in Indielisboa 2008 and has already been screened at, among others, Locarno, London Film Festival, Mar del Plata and Torino, was released in theaters in Portugal in May 2009. It is directed by Sandro Aguilar, widely rewarded for his former shorts, and marks his debut in feature film.
The film, with a cast leaded by Isabel Abreu and António Pedroso, speaks about characters who have to deal with the loss of a loved one. A man observes his father’s body lying on the white hospital sheets, only moving because of the artificial respirator that keeps him alive. A panic-stricken pregnant woman holds on tight to her husband in an ambulance, as medical staff try to resuscitate him. In an apartment, the man tries to get used to the disembodied space where his father lived. The father’s dog is still there, but his presence in no way attenuates the feeling of profound emptiness that emanates from the place. A couple expecting a baby live in the remote countryside, but one night the husband goes out and does not come back. These men and women seem anaesthetised by their overwhelming grief. Survivors walking in spaces almost devoid of life, they stumble forward, seeking a place to rest.
THE PORTUGUESE NUN was screened in Locarno, in Montréal’s Festival des Films du Monde, and was recently selected to the London Film Festival.
This is Green’s fourth feature film and his first spoke in Portuguese. It features the Portuguese actors Leonor Baldaque, Ana Moreira, Beatriz Batarda, Carloto Cotta and Diogo Dória, and the French actor Adrien Michaux, as well as the special participations of fado singers Camané and Aldina Duarte.
Throughout THE PORTUGUESE NUN we get to know Julie de Hauranne, a young French actress who speaks her mother’s language, Portuguese, and that arrives to Lisbon for the first time to act in a film inspired by Guilleragues’ Letters of a Portuguese Nun. She is soon fascinated by a nun who comes to pray every night at the Nossa Senhora do Monte Chapel on Graça Hill. During her stay, the young woman has a number of encounters, which, much like her previous existence, seem ephemeral and without consequence. But one night, after finally speaking with the nun, she glimpses her destiny and the meaning of her life.