09/03/2018 - Sequeira’s second film centres on the love story between the title character and Portugal’s former prime minister

Shooting is under way in Lisbon for Snu [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Portuguese director Patrícia Sequeira’s second feature. Her new outing stars Inês Castelo-Branco as Snu Abecassis, a Danish publisher whose affair with Portuguese politician and PM Francisco de Sá Carneiro shocked post-revolutionary Portugal. The couple died in December 1980 in a plane crash, the details of which are still murky and controversial nearly 40 years later.

Snu is a fictional story written by Claúdia Clemente, based on both real events and on biographies published about the couple. The real focus of the story is the romantic relationship between Abecassis and de Sá Carneiro, rather than their mysterious death, which has already inspired other films, such as Luís Filipe Rocha’s Camarate (2001).

“I am interested in the female figure, in the foreign figure who sees this country from an outsider’s perspective. And I am interested in talking about us, who we were and how someone could experience such a love story with all that urgency. This is a story of love and courage – and that’s why it attracts me so much,” stated Sequeira, one of the country’s most renowned TV drama directors, whose feature debut, Game of Checkers [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2016), was also a female-driven story.

Besides Castelo-Branco, the cast also includes Pedro Almendra as de Sá Carneiro, Inês Rosado, Simon Frankel, Ana Nave, Patrícia Tavares and Pedro Saavedra.

The film, budgeted at €1 million, is being co-produced by José Francisco Gandarez for Skydreams and by Sequeira’s own company, Santa Rita Filmes, with the support of the ICA and RTP. Snu will get a theatrical release in late September, courtesy of NOS Distribution.