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.
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.
To My Parents in Porto Femme official selection
The documentary To My Parents, directed by Melanie Pereira, is in the National Competition of Porto Femme International Film Festival.
The Beach selected for the São Paulo International Film Festival
The film, directed by Pedro Neves, will be in the International Competition at the São Paulo International Film Festival in Brazil.
As Melusinas à Margem do Rio was selected for the Doc Alliance Feature Film Award
As Melusinas à Margem do Rio was selected for the Doc Alliance Feature Film Award, which will be officially announced at the Marché du Film du Festival de Cannes in May and will then have its international premier at DocuDays in Ukraine in June.
Tarrafal at SACO
The film Tarrafal, directed by Pedro Neves, will be shown at the Semana del Audiovisual Contemporáneo de Oviedo (SACO) in Asturias, Spain.