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FESTIVALS Portugal

Green's Nun and de Oliveira's Girl to screen at London

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Two recent Portuguese productions, starring two rising local actresses, will be presented at the forthcoming 53rd Times BFI London Film Festival (October 14-29).

First seen at the latest Locarno Film Festival (see news) and still unreleased in Portugal, The Portuguese Nun [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
is the fourth film by French director Eugène Green (2001 Louis-Delluc Award winner for Toutes les Nuits). Green cast 2003 Shooting Star Leonor Baldaque (a regular in Manoel de Oliveira's films) to play a French actress who is in Lisbon shooting an adaptation of Gabriel de Guilleragues' Letters of a Portuguese Nun.

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While exploring the city, Baldaque's character bonds first with a solitary aristocrat (Diogo Dória), then her co-star (Adrien Michaux). But her most telling encounters prove to be with a young orphan boy and with the nun of the title, the real-life counterpart to her film role.

Part of London's Experimenta sidebar, The Portuguese Nun was co-produced by Lisbon-based O Som e a Fúria and Paris' Mact Productions. It also stars Beatriz Batarda (Alice [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marco Martins
interview: Nuno Lopes
film profile
]
), Ana Moreira (Northern Land [+see also:
film review
film profile
]
) and guest stars Fado singer Camané.

The section Films on the Square will screen Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, also know as Manoel de Oliveira's centenary film. Freely adapted from an Eça de Queirós short story, Eccentricities stars 22-year-old Catarina Wallenstein as the blond-haired girl, with whom young accountant Macarios (Oliveira's grandson Ricardo Trepa) falls in love.

Co-produced by Portugal’s Filmes do Tejo II with Les Films de l'Après-midi (France) and Eddie Saeta (Spain), the film was first seen earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival (see review), before Filmes Lusomundo released it locally. Eccentricities is part of the line-up of international sales agent Pyramide International.

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