The film "Nefta Football Club" by Yves Piat and Damien Megherbi, winner of the program "My Generation" of Curtas Vila do Conde, is among the five nominees for the category “Best Short Film” of the Oscars 2020.
"My Generation", the new competitive section of Curtas Vila do Conde, is especially directed to the age group between 14 and 18. The short films of this section were selected by a group of 12 students from Vila do Conde and Póvoa de Varzim High Schools.
"Nefta Football Club" portrays the story of Abdallah, a soccer fan, who finds in the desert a mule that carried drugs, that he believes to be detergent. Abdallah decides to use the "detergent" to draw the marking lines on his football field.
The awards ceremony for the 92nd Oscars will be held on February 9 in Los Angeles.
"Serpentarius", first feature film by Carlos Conceição, was awarded with the Tv Cine New Talent Award DocLisboa that took place from 17th to 27th October in Lisbon. Carlos Conceição was the second director "in focus" of the 27th Curtas Vila do Conde, where all his films were screened, including the national premiere of the award-winning "Serpentário".
The film was presented on the 25th October within the festival's section entitled New Visions, whose program aims to discuss borders and limits with films from different times that question the contemporary nature of cinema.
The New Talent Prize is given to the director of the best first feature film of the event's whole program, except retrospectives and cinema of urgency, and was awarded by the jury composed of Aya Koretzky (director, Portugal), Sofia Bohdanowicz (director, Canada) and Veton Nurkollari (artistic director of the Dokufest Festival, Kosovo).
“Serpentarius" a Luso-Angolan co-production, represented by Agência - Portuguese Short Film Agency, follows a young man who drifts through a post-disaster African landscape in search of his mother's ghost, and is led by the actor João Arrais with the participation of Isabel Abreu (voice).
The film had its world premiere at the Forum section of the Berlinale an it won the Nuove Visione Award at Sicilia Queer in Italy, the Burgas Film Festival Audience Award in Bulgaria, the Best Editing Award and a Special Mention for Best Film at the Filmadrid Festival, as well as a Nouveaux Alchemists Special Jury Mention at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma.
"Dogs Barking at Birds" by Leonor Teles and "The Marvelous Misadventures of the Stone Lady" by Gabriel Abrantes are among the five finalists of the European Film Awards, in the category of "Best Short Film". The winners will be announced on 7th December.
"Dogs Barking at Birds", produced by Uma Pedra no Sapato and promoted internationally by the AGÊNCIA – Portuguese Short Film Agency, was commissioned and financed by the Municipality of Porto, within the scope of the project “Cultura em Expansão”, and entirely shot in the city of Porto. The film follows the summer days of Vicente and his family, forced to leave their home in central Porto, due to real estate speculation.
To get to this short list, the juris of 19 festivals from all over Europe, of which Curtas Vila do Conde is the only Portuguese festival included, chose a nominee that now resulted in 5 finalists. "The Marvelous Misadventures of the Stone Lady", by Gabriel Abrantes, was awarded and chosen by the jury of the 27th Curtas Vila do Conde as candidate to the nominees of the European Film Awards. The short film was also rewarded with the “Great Prize Fiction” and the "Audience Award" at the festival.
These awards recognize the excellence of films produced in Europe and are awarded annually by the European Film Academy, composed of around 3,500 professionals in the field. The 32nd ceremony of the European Film Awards will be held in Berlin, Germany, on 7th December.
The 12th edition of Euro Connection will take place on 4 and 5 February 2020, during the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. This platform aims to assist partnerships between European producers in the production of short films.
“Serpentarius”, first feature film by director Carlos Conceição, will be part of Viennale's program, to be held from October 24th to November 6th, in Vienna, Austria.
“Serpentarius” by Carlos Conceição, a Portuguese-Angolan co-production, represented by Agência - Portuguese Short Film Agency, had its world premiere at Berlinale Forum and was first exhibited in Portuguese territory at Curtas Vila do Conde where the author was Director in Focus. In the meantime, the film won the Nuove Visione Prize at Sicilia Queer in Italy, the Audience Award at the Burgas Film Festival in Bulgaria and is now selected for Viennale, the most important international film event in Austria as well as one of the most world's oldest and best known German-speaking festivals.
"Serpentarius" will be screened at part of the Viennale Features section, accompanied by films by Pedro Costa, Agnés Varda, Nadav Lapid or the Dardenne brothers. About this Austrian premiere, Viennale's programmer, Nico Marzano, wrote about the film on the event's webpage:
Carlos Conceição's first full length feature "Serpentarius" unfolds before our eyes as an hypnotic journey between memories and premonitory visions, and the idea of voyage as starting point for a personal and collective search. The film and the gaze of Carlos Conceição, a long-time collaborator of João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, is inextricably rooted in his personal journey, and that of his family, from Angola (where he is originally from) to Portugal. Through undefinable landscapes, haunting mythology and sci-fi ruins, the search for the director's mother and his origins begins. "Serpentarius" progressively takes shape as a cinematic alter ego that speaks of the act of leaving, setting out, exploring. Preoccupations such as colonialism, slavery and the relationship between the land and people who belong to that land are embedded in the idea of a spiritual quest. "Serpentarius" unfolds as an odyssey, an ancestral road movie, suspended between multiple dimensions that take us through the desert, ruins, history, future and all those places of life and death. However the serpentarium is also the place where snakes are bred, it is the job of those who carry them, the constellation from which it's possible to observe the world. As in a long stream of consciousness, "Serpentarius" is a personal and existential reflection relying on associations of ideas and spaces that plays with Proust, with our soul, in a continuous digression where in turn courted by ladies wearing eighteenth-century laces around their necks; passengers in a van or the Three Caravels; gunslingers in the saloons of the Wild West or astronauts looking for another dimension beyond space and time. What are we looking for ? Identity, belonging, tradition, roots represented by a mother left behind and whose absence keeps returning in dreams and memories yet as a physical, palpable and haunting presence.
"Party Day", the first short film by the Portuguese director Sofia Bost, was selected to the international competition of the New York Film Festival (NYFF), that takes place between 27th of September and 13th of October. The film will be screened as part of the International Program 1 - Shorts, described by a mixture of narrative and documentary that showcases bold, new films by emerging and established filmmakers working in international cinema today.
Produced by Uma Pedra no Sapato and promoted international by Agência - Portuguese Short Film Agency, "Party Day" had is international premiere at Semaine de la Critique of the Cannes Film Festival and is national premiere at Curtas Vila do Conde. "Party Day" follows Mena on the birthday of her daughter Clara, and has the participation of actresses Rita Martins, Melissa Matos, Teresa Madruga, Sandra Celas, Mariana Silva, Sara Gonçalves and Fernanda Neves.
The programers of the Shorts section describe the film: "A cash-strapped single mother is pulled into an unresolved family conflict as she struggles to host her daughter’s seventh birthday party. Sofia Bost’s 16mm-shot drama, filled with illuminating performances, renders a complicated depiction of motherhood and the inconsolable grievances inherited by each generation."
