Locarno: Pedro Costa in competition with Horse Money
by Vitor Pinto
- Edgar Pêra’s Lisbon Revisited is also set to screen out of competition
Pedro Costa’s Horse Money and Edgar Pêra’s Lisbon Revisited are the two Portuguese titles to be shown at the 67th Locarno Film Festival (6-16 August).
One of the seventeen films competing for the Golden Leopard, Horse Money is Costa’s first feature film since the 2009 documentary Change Nothing [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. Since then, Costa – one of Portugal’s most prestigious and uncompromising filmmakers – has only released two shorts: O Nosso Homem (2010) and Sweet Exorcism, one of the four shorts included in the film Historic Centre [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2012), co-directed with three other directors.
Though information about Horse Money is still scarce, it has been announced that the film is to bring back Ventura, who has been a central figure in Costa’s work since Colossal Youth [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which competed at Cannes in 2006. Besides Ventura, Horse Money’s cast also includes Vitalina Varela and Tito Furtado.
Also at Locarno, but out of competition, is Edgar Pêra’s Lisbon Revisited, whose title evokes the poem of the same name by Fernando Pessoa. Produced by Guimaraes-based outfit Bando à Parte, the film is an experimental 3D project that sees the vocal participation of Amarante Abramovici, Marina Albuquerque, Maya Booth, Miguel Borges and Nuno Melo, among others.
The Portuguese contingent is rounded off by the presence of company Rosa Filmes, co-producer of the documentary Songs from the North, by South Korean director Soon-Mi Yoo, which is to screen in the Filmmakers of the Present section.
Locarno’s latest editions have become a successful launch pad for Portuguese productions, with some titles, such as Gonçalo Tocha’s It’s the Earth Not the Moon [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2011), Joao Pedro Rodrigues and Joao Rui Guerra da Mata's The Last Time I Saw Macao [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2012), and Joaquim Pinto’s What Now? Remind Me [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2013) gaining higher international visibility after they received awards there.
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