Who are the new Lisboetas?
by Vitor Pinto
Sérgio Tréfaut's film Lisboetas, released on April 20 by Atalanta Filmes, exceeded 12,000 admissions last week, to become the most successful Portuguese documentary thus far.
Lisboetas focuses on a new wave of immigrants from Brazil, Eastern Europe and Africa currently changing the face of a capital that used to be a point of departure and is now seen by many foreigners as a land of opportunity. But who are these new Lisboetas, then? Thirty-one year-old Tréfaut traces a portrait of them, opening a cinematic window onto these people's family lives, work, religious rituals and civil rights.
With a background in philosophy and journalism, Tréfaut began producing and directing his own works in the late 1990s. Building a bridge between cinema and contemporary art, Tréfaut had already developed a 30-minute video installation called "Novos Lisboetas", shown in the Parc La Villette (Paris) in 2003, which can currently be seen in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon).
Produced by Tréfaud himself with the support of ICAM, the documentary Lisboetas – a natural development of the video installation – was the winner of the Best Portuguese Film Award of the IndieLisboa 2004.
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