Miguel Gomes • Portugal • 2012 • A sumptuous, eccentric romance by a modern master.
Pilar is a middle-class woman, and devout Catholic, living in Lisbon. She has become something of a de facto daughter of Aurora, the imperious and cantankerous old woman who lives next door, through all of her fights and crises. When Aurora is hospitalized one day, she sends Pilar to pass word of her condition to Gian Luca, a man of whom no one has ever heard her speak. Pilar's quest to fulfill her friend’s wish serves as a portal to Mozambique fifty years earlier, before the start of the Portuguese Colonial War.
Steeped in the lush, tropical soundscape of its African setting and unfolding in a suspended temporality, Tabu offers curious parallels between Portugal’s colonial past and present. Miguel Gomes’s third film premiered at Thessaloniki, BAFICI - Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Stockholm and Berlin, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize.
Emmanuel Laurent • France • 2010
Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut changed the face of cinema forever as members of the French New Wave. They also happened to be best friends. From the Cannes premiere of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows in 1959 to Godard’s Breathless the following year, to their tim...
Roy Andersson • Sweden • 2007
Dreams can be terrifying. But so is reality. A psychiatrist prescribes pills to his patients, unconvinced that happiness is even possible. A middle-aged woman is down in the dumps,...
