Silvestre features and a focus on Camilo Restrepo

Monday, June 21, 2021

Known for its radicality in the discovery of new bold voices, the Silvestre section, in its features component, comes back with a programme filled with acclaimed filmmakers (Radu Jude, Eugène Green and John Gianvito) and fearless discoveries. As corollary, after having looked in past at the work of filmmakers such Mati Diop, Jean-Gabriel Périot or Ben Rivers, in 2021, the focus will be on the work of colombian filmmaker Camilo Restrepo, one of the greatest revelations in cinema in the last decade. The 18th edition of IndieLisboa takes place between August 21 and September 6 in the usual venues.

The Silvestre section prizes the singularity of works both by young and established authors who, rejecting the status quo, create new cinematographic languages.

Within the feature films of the section, can be highlighted amongst many others Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, a feature film by Radu Jude, who has won IndieLisboa several times. The film crystallizes the particularity of the section through its unconventional form and irreverent sense of humour. This satire of the pandemic we are living through had its premiere at Berlinale, where it was acclaimed by the critics and won the main prize of the festival – the Golden Bear.

By Eugène Green, whose close relationship with the festival dates to its first edition, when he won the Grand Prize IndieLisboa, Atarrabi & Mikelats, his last feature. In this modernised version of a Basque myth, sincerity and satire walk hand in hand.

In Her Socialist Smile, John Gianvito constructs an experimental essay around the leftist and suffragist figure of Helen Keller, who despite having lost her hearing and sight as a child, became a prolific writer, professor and activist. The film highlights Keller’s important public appearances, such as her speech Out of the Dark, in 1913.

In international premiere, there is A Cidade dos Abismos, by Pryscila Bettim and Renato Coelho, a timeless fable that recovers 70s brazilian cinema, in a feast of colour and sequins which anticipate tragedy.

We are also showing the disconcerting work of Christophe Cogne who explored, in À pas aveugles, the origin of photographs taken by prisoners of concentration camps, who secretly photographed and documented the horrors they witnessed.

And Au coeur du bois, by Claus Drexel, who from the heart of Bois de Boulogne gives voice to the stories of those who work there.

The Silvestre focus will be on the ouvre of colombian filmmaker Camilo Restrepo. Along with Teddy Williams and Kiro Russo, Restrepo is one of the strongest and most coherent voices of the new cinema coming from Latin America. IndieLisboa has followed the three filmmakers from up close, who have won different prizes from short to feature films.

Born in Medellín, Camilo Restrepo lives and works in Paris since 1999, where he is member of the collective L’abominable, a laboratory where artists of different generations and backgrounds work with film. Therefore, the focus will include a programme of short-films by members of the collective, especially chosen by Camilo Restrepo.

His first feature portrays an individual journey that merges with the Colombian social and political landscape; in Los Conductos, the vibrant colours and the film texture give idiosyncratic beauty to a film whose main character lives haunted by violent memories,

With five shorts and a feature film, all present in renowned international festivals, from Cannes to Berlin, through Locarno, Restrepo uses images with a political and social discourse, portraying fringes of society, often through a psychedelic dialogue between image and sound, with music punctuating in some of his most daring works. It is with the heart at the center of each film that Restrepo dares and dares, until it gets through the skins.

The programme of the remaining sections, including the short-films of the section Silvestre, will be announced soon.

PROGRAMME