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An elegantly filmed reflection on Angola's colonial history, drifting between genres, honored at Locarno.
Angola in 1974. The war of independence is almost over, and most of the Portuguese colonialists have been driven out of the country. A young local woman on her way to visit a nun makes the acquaintance of a Portuguese soldier. Meanwhile, an entire Portuguese battalion full of young recruits bravely holds its ground until it is quite literally confronted by the ghosts of the past. This leads to the intrusion of wholly unexpected genre elements in Carlos Conceição's second feature film.
Meet the director
Carlos Conceição
Carlos Conceição was born in Angola in 1979. He earned a degree in English literature with a focus on the Romantic period prior to attending the theater and film school in Lisbon. At the beginning of his career as an artist, he created music videos, video art, and various installations. His short film VERSAILLES was screened at Locarno in 2013. His short films GOODNIGHT CINDERELLA (2014) and BAD BUNNY (2017) were screened at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes, establishing him as a new voice of young European cinema. His feature-length debut, SERPENTARIUS, premiered in the Forum section of the Berlinale in 2019. During the pandemic, he made the medium-length horror film NAME ABOVE TITLE (2020), which received the Méliès d'argent in Strasbourg and the award for best first or second European film at the European Film Festival in Seville. TOMMY GUNS is his second feature film; it premiered at Locarno in 2022, where it received the Europa Cinemas Label. Conceição is currently shooting a feature film in the genre of "body horror".