Film Details

Winner of the top prize at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, the enthralling new film from the director of Horse Money and Colossal Youth transports us once again to Lisbon’s Fontainhas neighborhood, an urban shantytown populated by immigrants. Vitalina Varela is a 55-year-old Cape Verdean woman who arrives in Portugal three days after her husband’s funeral—having waited for more than 25 years to emigrate. As Varela adjusts to the dark, dank apartment that her husband called home and tries to reboot her life, there’s not a lot of action. But the movie’s exquisite chiaroscuro cinematography (evoking Rembrandt) and a haunting mood provide ample compensations. The film limns a shadowy netherworld in which the living rub shoulders with ghosts. “The best movie of the year.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, Sight & Sound. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 124 min.

Though our theatrical screenings on 4/17 & 18 have been canceled (the film will be rescheduled after we reopen), Vitalina Varela can be watched online thru 4/30 via the link below. Doing so supports the Cinematheque.