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ROME FILM FESTIVAL Portugal

Northern Land: Botelho’s world of strong women

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While British filmmaker Peter Greenaway has been saying for years that "cinema is too important to leave in the hands of storytellers,” Portuguese director João Botelho, in competition at the Rome Film Festival with The Northern Land, lays on the message even thicker.

"Always wanting to recount something is the true original sin of this art,” he said. A sin that the director of Quem és tu? and The Fatalist [+see also:
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does not want to commit, as confirmed by his latest film. Although it is an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Agustina Bessa Luis, the film adheres to the ideals of abstract cinema and is especially attentive to figurative expression.

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Northern Land centres on Rosalina de Sousa, a fascinating and mysterious woman who went from brothels to theatres, was a baroness who frequented high society salons and died a possible suicide. This enigmatic noblewoman is studied - in a complex web of temporal planes – by three young descendants trying to understand her. Spanning from the late 19th century to the 1960s, all the women, de Sousa included, are played by Ana Moreira.

"Mine is a world of strong women and weak men. In the film, Rosalina meets Princess Sissi, who was a symbol of female emancipation, a role model," says the filmmaker, who is not interested in the plot, however. "Cinema is neither what nor when, it is how. It is seeing and feeling. We can be moved, and even swept away, by the simplicity of a still shot of an olive tree blowing in the wind."

Focused as always on the work’s poetic ("I love poetry more than prose," he says) and painterly dimensions, Botelho draws upon the colours of Caravaggio (such as from his masterpiece "Judith Beheading Holofernes") and proves himself a sophisticated creator of tableaux vivants. Even when, such as here, he abandons 35mm for digital – which he uses for the first time in a feature film, after the shorts A Baleia Branca, Uma Ideia de Deus and A Terra antes do céu.

More than an expressive choice – "Digital has many defects," he admits – it was a way to curb expenses. The film cost €2.5m and was produced by the highly active Pandora da Cunha Telles for Filmes de Fundo - who also handle international sales – with support from ICA and RTP.

The domestic release is set for January 17, 2009.

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(Translated from Italian)

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