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Original name: Vitalina Varela
English name: Vitalina Varela
Year: 2019
Run time: 124’
Language: Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese
Type (Colour/ Black & white): Colour
Country: Portugal
Director: Pedro Costa
Producer: Abel Ribeiro Chaves
Cast: Vitalina Varela, Ventura, Manuel Tavares Almeida, Francisco Brito, Imídio Monteiro, Marina Alves Domingues
Screenplay: Pedro Costa, Vitalina Varela
Cinematographer: Leonardo Simões
Editor: João Dias, Vítor Carvalho
Sound Designer: Hugo Leitão
Production Company: Optec
World Sales:Optec
World Sales Phone: +351 925097584
World Sales Email: mail@optec.pt
Pedro Costa hails from Lisbon, Portugal, is one of the most revered director working in cinema today. At young age, attended classes taught by the poet and filmmaker António Reis at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School. His first film Blood had its world premiere at the Venice FF (1989). Down to Earth(1994), screened in Cannes. His other works include In Vanda’s Room (2000), Colossal Youth, screened in Competition in Cannes, in 2006, and Horse Money, which was awarded the Best Director award at the Locarno Film Festival, in 2014.
Vitalina Varela, a 55-year-old woman from Cape Verde, arrives in Lisbon three days after her husband’s funeral. She’s been waiting for her plane ticket for more than 25 years. Suddenly, in the sumptuous darkness of a neighbourhood haunted by solemn shadows, the deep red of bloody sheets. Vitalina is too late; all she can do now is settle her husband’s affairs. She will mourn no unfortunates: facing bitter and fallen men, she resolves to rebuild the memory of a solid shared house in Cape Verde, blueprint by blueprint and wall by wall, fighting the sad reality of a life that could not be built under a decent roof in Portugal. Vitalina Varela plays out as a series of burnished, painterly still lives, rendering the nightmarish reality of the African diaspora and the harrowing legacy of racial and colonial violence as a dreamlike portrait of the living dead.
