30/01/2015 - A new agency has been created to promote Portuguese cinema beyond the country’s borders

The documentary The Wolf’s Lair (A Toca do Lobo) by Catarina Mourão, which had its world premiere this week at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, is one of the five Portuguese titles that comprise the catalogue of Portugal Film, an agency established recently in order to promote Portuguese cinema abroad.

Portugal Film, which received €45,000 in backing from the ICA, has resulted from the expansion of Lisbon Screenings. Initially organised as part of the IndieLisboa festival, the event was open exclusively to programmers and international sales agents that came to Lisbon to discover the freshest developments in national film production.

Now, the task of the new agency – which operates independently of IndieLisboa and is managed by Margarida Moz – is to disseminate national films beyond the country’s borders. With its eclectic and ever-growing catalogue (which includes short films, features, arthouse works and more mainstream titles), Portugal Film will be attending the Clermont-Ferrand Festival, which gets under way today, and the upcoming Berlinale (5-15 February). 

In addition to Mourão’s movie, the other productions that the agency is representing, at least for now, are the experimental documentaries The Indispensable Practice of Vagueness, by Filipa Reis and João Miller da Guerra, and October is Over by Karen Akerman and Miguel Seabra Lopes, as well as the shorts Farewell (Despedida), by Tiago Rosa-Rosso, and The Revolution Hunter, by Margarida Rêgo. Its catalogue will also soon include Here in Lisbon, a project shot last year by four directors: Denis Côté, Dominga Sotomayor, Gabriel Abrantes and Marie Losier (read more).

(Translated from Spanish)