17/03/2005

Portuguese filmmaker Leonel Vieira is back today to the national theatres with his latest work Um tiro no escuro (A shot in the dark), a luso-brazilian film produced by Tino Navarro.
Written by Jorge Almeida and João Nunes, the film tells the story of Verónica, a Brazilian woman, whose baby daughter is kidnapped by a Portuguese flight attendant in the airport of Rio de Janeiro. Two years later, Verónica has moved to Lisbon and she is desperately seeking the kidnapper. What seems to be a melodramatic tale switches soon into a thriller with the main character getting involved with a bank stealing gang and being chased by a cop.
Starring internationally recognised Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida (Capitães de Abril by Maria de Medeiros) and young Brazilian talent Vanessa Machado, the film is the most recent production by Tino Navarro after the 2004 flop Portugal S.A. by Ruy Guerra. Usually associated to mainstream projects (openly opposed to art house cinema genre produced by Paulo Branco), Tino Navarro associates once again to private broadcaster SIC. It is the sequel of a seminal collaboration initiated in the mid '90s responsible, among others, for the box office hit Adão e Eva by Joaquim Leitão.

Um tiro no escuro is the sixth title in Leonel Vieira's filmography after A sombra dos Abutres (1998), Zona J (1998), Mustang (2000), A Bomba, and A Selva (2003), that was partially shot in Amazonia.
Distributed by Lusomundo the film is the second Portuguese film released this year, after Atalanta Filmes' distribution of Quinto Império by Manoel de Oliveira.