the end of childhood

Carefully restored in 4K under the supervision of its own director, and thanks to the distributor Atalanta, the debut feature film of the Portuguese Pedro Costa, a respected figure in Portuguese cinematography and an essential author of the current scene, arrives on our screens.

Filmed at the end of his studies at the Film School (late eighties), this film is a true filming exercise and a statement of intent by its author. Filmed in beautiful black and white, with echoes of night of the hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955), New wave or film noir classic, or blood it shows us the relationship between two brothers aged 10 and 19 and the other’s girlfriend, always in the shadow of an absent father (metaphorical absence at the beginning, real after the tragic event). Three protagonists who, like most of the characters who cross paths with their pictures, drifted through life, lost in the face of an inconsistent and unpromising future.

An initial and initial film, it possesses the germ of some of the keys to its director’s later cinematography, although it was not overly exemplary. His tendency to shoot with a small crew and limited resources (in this case characterized by the budget of the first film), his tendency to use a part of non-professional actors (here the main child, selected from an orphanage), there is a portrait of uprooted characters, a search for the truth and “the real one”. …

or blood is a story about the end of childhood, a portrait of an exile based on the expressiveness of certain poetic and symbolic images, while the important moments of the action take place in turned off. But above all, it is a lyrical and beautiful film, a melodrama about the cruelty of life and raising awareness about it, and a powerful author’s debut.

OR BLOOD.

Portugal, 1989. Director: Pedro Costa. Performers: Peter Hestnes,

Inês de Medeiros, Nuno Ferreira, Luis Miguel Cintra, Canto e Castro, Henrique Viana. Drama. 95 min.