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IFFR 2012 Portugal

A Woman’s Revenge and seven other Portuguese productions at Rotterdam

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A Woman’s Revenge [+see also:
trailer
interview: Rita Azevedo Gomes
film profile
]
, the latest feature by Rita Azevedo Gomes, will screen in the Spectrum section at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, which will open tomorrow and run until February 5.

In comments made to Cineuropa during the latest Lisbon and Estoril Film Festival (see news), where A Woman’s Revenge was the only Portuguese feature shown in competition, the director said that it was always clear that her adaptation of Barbey d'Aurevilly’s short story A Woman’s Revenge (1874) "would follow the structure of the original text in order to keep the story’s impact on the audience intact". To play the role of a duchess, who gets revenge on her husband by staining her own honour through prostitution, "I thought of Rita Durão and she accepted". Their work together was a success and Azevedo admits "I’d like to make another film with her".

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The production design, mainly in interior sets, is one of the most striking aspects of the film: "During the writing phase, I read the whole of d'Aurevilly’s work, which gave me the idea of understanding the studio as a great fictional masquerade to which we gain access through the presentation by the character of Roberto (Fernando Rodrigues), as if it was a performance".

A Woman’s Revenge is slated for commercial release in Portugal in March.

Moreover, the film’s producer, C.R.I.M., will also bring Marcelo Félix’s lyrical documentary Eden's Ark to Rotterdam’s Bright Future section.

Meanwhile, before presenting Miguel Gomes’s new film Tabu [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Miguel Gomes
interview: Miguel Gomes
film profile
]
(see news) at the Berlinale, Luís Urbano, of O Som e a Fúria, will attend the Dutch event as co-producer of Christine Laurent’s French/Portuguese film Demain?, and as producer of Miguel Fonseca’s The Waves, which is vying for a Tiger Award in the short films section.

The Portuguese contingent at Rotterdam is completed by five other shorts, to be shown in the Spectrum Shorts section: Cerro Negro by João Salaviza (see news); Palaces of Pity by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt; Silence of Two Sounds by Rita Figueiredo; and prestigious director Pedro Costa’s Our Man, marking his return to the Lisbon district of Fontainhas.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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