Tarrafal will have International premiere in CPH:DOX

Decades of conflict, gang dominance and violent clashes with the police have taken their toll on bodies, faces and buildings in S. João de Deus – a neighbourhood on the wrong side of the train tracks in the part of Porto where tourists never go.

cph:dox 2017
Tarrafal still

But the residents of the dilapidated neighbourhood have defended their homes and special community for just as long.

Pedro Neves continues and renews the Portuguese tradition of investigating the origins of melancholy in madness, and has created his very own variation of hard and dark social realism with an almost supernatural edge of something threatening and inexplicable. An atmosphere, which has a historical foundation in grainy VHS images of hot-tempered women who swear at the police from the windows of a dilapidated apartment block, but which in today’s moment meet us like a silent and bare-chested man on horseback. If ‘gentrification blues’ was a genre, ‘Tarrafal’ would be the sound of a hoarse voice singing at night. And as a film, it is an unmistakably Portuguese and strangely haunting experience.

View more from

Shipwrecked selected to Caminhos do Cinema Português Festival

The film, a co-production between Red Desert - Curtas Vila do Conde CRL and directed by Pedro Neves, will be featured in the Outros Olhares section of the Festival.

22.11.19

As Maçãs Azuis selected for Porto Post Doc

As Maçãs Azuis, by Ricardo Leite was selected for the Porto Post Doc 2022 Spoken Film Competition. The film is produced by Red Desert.

01.11.22

Geni by Luís Vieira Campos will world premiere at Porto Post Doc

Geni, directed by Luís Vieira Campos, will be screened on November 24th, at 19h0 in Passos Manuel, as part of the Cinema Falado section.

16.11.18

Inn won the award for Best Documentary at the 9th International Film Festival Prvi Kadar

The Inn / Hospedaria has won another international award. This time, it was at the International Film Festival Prvi Kadar in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, as the winner of the GRAND PRIX "Tombstone Prince Pavle" for the best documentary film in the international selection "In Focus".

16.11.15