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FILMS Portugal

A Ilha dos Cães: Dog days are not over

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- Portuguese director Jorge António directs a genre film set against the backdrop of the post-colonial legacy

A Ilha dos Cães: Dog days are not over
Nicolau Breyner and Ângelo Torres in A Ilha dos Cães

Jorge António’s second feature, A Ilha dos Cães [+see also:
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(lit. “The Island of the Dogs”), is already screening in Portuguese theatres, after a premiere held at the Fantasporto festival last February. The film includes one of the last performances by popular Portuguese actor and director Nicolau Breyner, who passed away in 2016.

A Ilha dos Cães is the screen adaptation of Angolan writer Henrique Abranches’ novel Os senhores do areal, which is set in Angola in two different historical time periods, and is focused on the themes of slavery and colonisation. In the film, those two timelines become interlinked in the plot through the presence of a group of dangerous dogs living on an island, specifically around a fortress that was once a prison where Portuguese colonisers used to punish mostly native dissidents opposed to the political regime. Today, the island – a spot mainly inhabited by fishermen – is on the verge of becoming the setting for a big tourist resort, a fact that seems to deeply displease the dogs.

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Starring Miguel Hurst and Ângelo Torres as the two opposing lead characters, the film attempts to compensate for its low budget with strong, convincing performances and a solid – yet predictable – script that raises the questions of racism, revenge, decolonisation and identity. Angola evolved from a former Portuguese colony devastated by war into a rich, independent country lacking in democracy. Although the country’s current political situation is certainly not at the centre of the plot, there is a feeling of unbridled ambition and corruption in the air. Hurst’s character is to the local fishermen what the young civil engineer was to that fearless old lady in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s acclaimed Brazilian film Aquarius [+see also:
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: they embody market forces fighting against the preservation of a particular location – and the whole historical memory that becomes attached to it. Now, the enemy is within. It’s almost as if the former black victim were about to become the reincarnation of the white torturer. Hurst’s character’s skin disease (a form of depigmentation) is certainly no coincidence: “I am getting whiter than the whites,” he says to his girlfriend in one of the scenes.

However, in A Ilha dos Cães, fantastic imagery ends up eclipsing the film’s socio-historical context. And that is undoubtedly the film’s Achilles’ heel, as this decision warranted a higher budget that would have produced more convincing special effects than the ones we actually see on screen – particularly in the most confrontational and violent sequences.

António, who has been splitting his life between Angola and Portugal for decades now, directed his first feature, O Miradouro da Lua – widely considered the first co-production between the two countries – back in 1992. He is also the man behind the documentaries Kuduro, fogo no museke (2007) and O lendário tio Liceu e os Ngola Ritmos (2010). A Ilha dos Cães was shot on location in Angola and in São Tomé and Príncipe, and was produced by Portuguese outfit Cinemate. The director is already attached to another movie, Noyola, pitched as the first Portuguese animated feature for adults, based on a play written by renowned African writers José Eduardo Agualusa and Mia Couto.

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