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.
Up Next in Ricky D'Ambrose
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The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu
Andrei Ujică • Romania-Germany • 2010 • A glimpse inside the mind of a narcissistic leader.
On Christmas Day, 1989, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elsa, died by firing ...
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The Round-Up
Miklós Jancsó • Hungary • 1966 • A hypnotic, dazzling vision of war.
Miklós Jancsó’s most renowned work depicts a prison camp in the aftermath of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution. After the Hapsburg monarc...
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Walden
Jonas Mekas • United States • 1969 • An epic and intimate document of 1960s New York.
A 27-year-old Lithuanian émigré sets out to film his life as it unfolds. In six reels, we encounter several chapters—including the 1960s New York arts scene, featuring many of the filmmaker’s friends: Stan Brak...
