On 3 films from IndieLisboa 2020’s “Novissimos” / “Brand New” section

The “Novissimos” (or “Brand New”) section of IndieLisboa 2020 was, in the festival’s own words, a “competitive section comprising films by Portuguese young filmmakers. Some directed their film in a school context; others were fearless enough to direct a first film regardless of any support. Portuguese cinema continues to affirm surprising new voices that the festival wants to support and show.”

One feature and 16 shorts were included, and—as tends to be the case when it comes to sidebars dedicated to cutting-edge or “emerging” talent—several of the most promising and noteworthy contenders eschewed traditional fictional formats in favour of documentary and/or experimental approaches.

Of the three that caught my eye and attention in particular, two were collective efforts: Mulher como Árvore [Woman Like Tree], by Daniela Cajias, Helder Faria, Flávio Ferreira, Carmen Tortosa and Alejandro Vásquez—the quintet working, according to the closing credits, “under the guidance of Pedro Costa” presumably in some kind of workshop setting—and Lázaro, whose three equal-billed co-directors and co-cinematographers (David Cruces, Alba Dominguez, Concha Silveira) made the picture while studying at Lisbon’s Universidad Lusofona.

All eight individuals can thus theoretically be classed as “names to watch,” but a person with even more solid claims to that distinction is Reinaldo Pinto Almeida, as he is the sole credited director of The Sacrifice of the Druids. A Berlin-based Portuguese of Indian (or rather Goan) ancestry, he also collaborated on the film’s cinematography with Doreen Töppel and on the soundtrack with the enigmatic “DJ Silver.” So enigmatic, indeed, that there must be some suspicion that DJ Silver is in fact Pinto Almeida himself.

Selecting the relatively mature Pinto Almeida (b.1983) as the “find” of Novissimos 2020 seems a little unfair on his more youthful peers in the section, however, as he already has a couple of noteworthy international credits. He was the editor of Thomas Arslan’s mainly Norwegian-set road-movie Helle Nächte (Bright Nights), which competed for the Golden Bear at the 2017 Berlinale and whose star Georg Friedrich won the Silver Bear for Best Actor.

In drastic contrast to Arslan’s feature, which played out under the Midnight Sun north of the Arctic Circle, The Sacrifice of the Druids is a pitchily tenebrous affair, its images so dark that it really demands to be seen on a cinema screen rather than, say, via a laptop or television where black tones seldom transfer satisfactorily.

A fictional enterprise without anything in the way of conventional narrative over its seven minutes, it offers glimpses of (isolated) people in and around a farm at night, illuminated briefly by passing lights. These haunting, enigmatic scenes are accompanied by heavily susurrant electronic music of a sometimes poundingly intense nature. The doomy chords presented in tandem with (and sometimes competing against) elliptical narration spoken by Pinto Almeida himself, an American-accented English. “Why perish in the light when you can roam in darkness?” he poetically and rhetorically demands, typical of a screenplay which hovers precariously between profundity and portnentous verbiage.

A conceptual mood-piece of admirable boldness and confident stylistic élan, The Sacrifice of the Druids plays less like a distilled version of some longer work (as is so often the case with narrative-dependent short films) than a teaser or trailer for one. The picture recalls the ominous nocturnal ambience of recent low-budget indie spinechillers such as Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes At Night—suggesting that Pinto Almeida, who has already dipped his toes into relatively commercial filmmaking, might profitably explore the horror genre more overtly in his subsequent outings.

The teams behind Lázaro and Mulher como Árvore, however, would seem set for careers at the more rarefied end of the cinematic spectrum. Lázaro is a rumination on mortality and survival taking place in what, in the first shot (the camera mounted on some kind of trolley) looks like a hospital morgue. In fact this is one of the interior spaces at MUHNAC (Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência), the Natural History and Science Museum located in central Lisbon, just along from the picturesque Principe Real park that sits atop the Bairro Alto neighbourhood.

Images of stuffed animals and birds, glimpsed in soft shadow, are accompanied by jungle sounds and bird-noises fading in and out, along with occasional delicate strains of music. Paintings of flora and fauna are examined, likewise preserved skeletons of smaller creatures, and antique jars of formaldehyde-preserved remains. In the midst of death, life goes on: the museum’s cleaners are shown going about their business, performing their mundane but important labours in august surroundings where, as in many parts of this city and indeed this country, time seems to have gone into a limbo of perpetual, present pause.

The tone of Lázaro is reflective rather than morbid, a memento mori of calm, aesthetic poise. The overall mood is crucially leavened by the most fruitful editorial gambit: the voice of a middle-aged or elderly female medium, whose lively, flighty narration (sometimes operating on double audio tracks, overlapping with itself) provides a welcome leavening of mood. Her contributions, taken in tandem with the bible-referencing title, point to the the possibility that death may not always be a terminal condition in spiritual or even physical terms.

Such glimmers of hope would be welcomed by the lifeworn protagonist of Mulher como Árvore [Woman Like Tree], septuagenarian-looking farmer Elva Silva Gonzales. A low-key paean to female stoicism and persistence shot in the squarish 4:3 format, this is an 18-minute character study of an individual and her environment, compiled from dawn to dusk via fly-on-the-wall glimpses of quotidian solo activities.

Performing duties around the farm which we deduce have occupied her for decades already, Elva prays and works, tending to her unseen and presumably invalid husband (with whom she would presumably have shared such tasks in earlier days), washing her dog (a sequence that we observe for a full minute and a half), chopping tough meat, picking tomatoes, watering plants (it’s a hot summer day), hanging out wet laundry, and so on, up until sundown when she again prays. Specific details of her family situation are withheld, but certain clues, fragments and snatches of monologue hint at Elva’s regrets and dismays (“my son… my grandson…”)

The camera seeks and often finds crucial representative details, and the filmmakers largely eschew anything resembling a formal flourish in a work which favours contemplative compositions. There is one striking exception, however, in a farmyard shot which slowly angles up into the shadowy eaves of the barn: “it’s night?” Elva’s husband is heard plaintively asking. As we see, it’s still very much daytime at this point, but darkness has already started to encroach. Mulher como Árvore is a tale of widowhood foretold, a glimpse into a transitory phase in the life of an ordinary, but compelling lady: the film concludes with an extended close-up of her face at dusk, frail but determined, her head wobbly with infirmity but her gaze steady and searching. Life goes on? Life goes on.

Neil Young
7th October 2020

Lázaro (David Cruces, Alba Dominguez, Concha Silveira) Portugal 2019, 8 min.
Mulher como Árvore [Woman Like Tree] (Daniela Cajias, Helder Faria, Flávio Ferreira, Carmen Tortosa, Alejandro Vásquez) Portugal 2020, 18 min.
The Sacrifice of the Druids (Reinaldo Pinto Almeida) Portugal 2020, 7 min.