Tabu
Tabu • 1h 58m
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, her imperious neighbor. 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.