The Director’s Cut section, dedicated to films about cinema, returns this year with treasures recently restored and films that now rework the cinematographic heritage.
In the feature films, special mention for The Devil Queen, a restored version of António Carlos da Fontoura’s 1974 film, shown at the Forum Special at the Berlinale this year. With an impeccable performance by actor Milton Gonçalves, who plays Diaba, a queer character who controls a drug trafficking network in the favela. Diaba, upon learning that one of his men is about to be arrested, decides to “manufacture” a new bandit to fool the police.
Ragtag, by Giuseppe Boccassini, another title to be highlighted, consists of a chronological collage based on a large corpus of footage taken from the so-called classic era of American cinema which, in the 1950s, après la lettre, French critics labelled as film noir. The decoupage-based work covers almost twenty years, or 310 noir films, from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. It also includes some foreign-made films.
There is also room for an archive documentary on a mythical and forgotten film festival that took place in Hyères between 1965 and 1983. Jeune Cinema, by Yves-Marie Mahé, takes us on a journey to the festival that was at the time the most important one in France, just after the Cannes Film Festival, and a friendly place to discover young directors like Gilles Garrel, Akerman, Helma Sanders, Schroeter or Carax, before they became a legend for art film amateurs.
In addition to the feature films, there is a selection of five short films, among them, As Pioneiras do Cinema em Língua Portuguesa, the most recent work of Portuguese director Luísa Sequeira.
List of films
Feature films:
L’Éden de La Ciotat, Alain Bergala , doc., France, 2022, 53′
Filme Particular, Janaína Nagata, doc., Brazil, 2022, 90′
Jeune Cinéma, Yves-Marie Mahé, doc., France, 2022, 74′
Prejudice & Pride – Swedish Film Queer, Eva Beling, doc., Sweden, 2022, 100′
Ragtag, Giuseppe Boccassini, doc./exp., Italy/Germany/France, 2022, 84′
A Rainha Diaba, António Carlos da Fontoura, fic., Brazil, 1974, 99′
Short films:
Damned Queers, Olle Holm, doc., Sweden, 1977, 21′
The Film You Are About To See, Maxime Martinot, doc., France, 2023, 11′
GeoMarkr, Chloé Galibert Lainê, doc./exp., France, 2022, 22′
As Pioneiras do Cinema em Língua Portuguesa, Luísa Sequeira, doc., Portugal, 2023, 15′
Staging Death, Jan Soldat, doc./exp., Austria, 2022, 8′
