10/05/2006

French company Memento Films will sell Juventude em marcha [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the new film by 47 year-old Portuguese director Pedro Costa, at Cannes. The festival line-up of the Paris-based company, run by Emile Georges and Alexandre Mallet, also includes Aurore by Niels Tavernier and El Violin by Mexican director Francisco Vargas, which will screen in the sidebar section Un Certain Regard.

Juventude em marcha tells the story of Ventura, a 75 year-old African man living in the suburbs of Lisbon. Abandoned by his wife and forced to move into a new house after the destruction of his old neighbourhood by Lisbon’s City Hall, Ventura decides to prove to himself that he can get back his youth in his old age.

Costa's new film – which marks the return of a Portuguese title to Cannes’ official competition four years after de Oliveira's The Uncertainty Principle – was produced by 2002 Producer on the Move Francisco Villa-Boas for Lisbon-based company Contracosta Produções, in co-production with Les Films de l'Etranger (France), Unlimited (France) and Ventura Films (Switzerland). Contracosta Produções had already produced Costa's previous feature film, In Vanda's Room (awarded at the Locarno Film Festival in 2002).