“Alma Viva”: Portugal’s Oscar nominee opens in theaters next week
The producer and distributor Midas Filmes announced that a film will premiere in more than 30 countries, from Lisbon to Porto, passing through Braga, Coimbra, Leiria, Viana do Castelo and Viseu, with special sessions scheduled in Aveiro, Castelo Branco rooms. , Estarreja, Funchal, Fundão, Santarém, Tavira and Tomar.
The premiere of the film takes place this Saturday at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, Lisbon, still preserved (conceived in anticipation of the film’s shooting), Mirandela, Macedo de Cavaleiros, Viana do Castelo and Porto.
Midas also stated that the film received the Pilar Miró Award for Best New Director, given at the International Film Week in Valladolid, Spain.
The distinction came after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival Critics’ Week Competition, following other awards from other festivals.
In September, the Academia Portuguesa de Cinema chose the film as Portugal’s nominee for the 2023 American film Oscars.
The feature film was the most voted among members of the academy to compete for an Oscar nomination for Best International Film in 2023.
“Alma Viva”, produced by Midas Filmes in co-production with France and Belgium, is Cristèle Alves Meira’s first feature film.
The film, a microcosm about family ties, emigration, mysticism and Trás-os-Montes culture, was invited to shoot in Junqueira, in the municipality of Vimioso, where a producer with maternal roots; and the filming, made last summer, relied mainly on non-professional actors from the locality.
“Alma Viva” centers on Salomé, a girl, the daughter of Portuguese emigrants in France, who spends the summer in a village with her grandmother, with whom she has a strong emotional and spiritual bond.
Salomé will witness her grandmother’s death and suspects that she was poisoned by witchcraft by another woman in the village. As the family organizes the funeral, Salomé believes he is equal by her grandmother’s spirit and tries to avenge her death.
“The story was completely inspired by powerful and mysterious stories I heard by the fireplace. These stories are almost like the archaic memory of Portugal, the matrix of our culture and I wanted to go back to those traditions and tell these stories in the cinema, to be in this transmission of world culture”, explained Cristèle Alves Meira to the Lusa agency on the eve of the premiere of Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film is a portrait of Portuguese emigration, of the families that are separated between those who stay and those who leave, and the social and economic differences that are born there.
Daughter of a Minho and a Trás-os-Montes native who emigrated to France, Cristèle Alves Meira maintains a connection to Portugal and her origins and assumes that this film has an autobiographical bent, even though it is a fiction.
In addition to “Alma Viva”, the members of the Portuguese Film Academy had four other films to vote on: “Lobo e Cão”, by Cláudia Varejão, “Mal Viver”, by João Canijo, “Restos do Vento”, by Tiago Guedes, and “Salgueiro Maia – O Implicado”, by Sérgio Graciano.
The 95th edition of the Oscars is scheduled for March 12, in Los Angeles, United States.
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