A gloriously demented fairy tale about a guileless soccer phenom who reacts to his World Cup loss by adopting a Mozambican who turns out to be an adult lesbian spy in disguise, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s “Diamantino” is one of the most original movies of the 21st century. “Amelia’s Children,” which Abrantes has directed on his own, is not. And yet, this comparatively straightforward psychological horror movie — which adheres to genre convention whenever it can, and has even fewer surprises in store than its premise would seem to suggest — is still playful and perverse enough in its details to indicate a unique talent behind the camera.
Case in point: “Attractive people in a creepy house” might be the single most basic setup a horror movie could possibly have, but Abrantes’ script comes up with a novel way of putting those pieces in place. In a way, “Amelia’s Children...
Case in point: “Attractive people in a creepy house” might be the single most basic setup a horror movie could possibly have, but Abrantes’ script comes up with a novel way of putting those pieces in place. In a way, “Amelia’s Children...
- 2/29/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
A Portuguese production, the psychological thriller horror movie Amelia’s Children had its premiere at the MOTELx Lisbon Horror Film Festival last year, then received a theatrical release in Portugal last month. Now Magnolia Pictures is gearing up to give the film a VOD and limited theatrical release in the US on March 1st – and with that date just one month away, we’ve got a trailer for Amelia’s Children embedded above.
Written and directed by Gabriel Abrantes, who previously made the comedy Diamantino with Daniel Schmidt, the film has the following synopsis: When Edward’s search for his biological family leads him and his girlfriend Ryley to a magnificent villa high in the mountains of Northern Portugal, he is full of excitement at meeting his long-lost mother and twin brother. Finally, he will discover who he is and where he comes from. But nothing is as it seems, and Edward...
Written and directed by Gabriel Abrantes, who previously made the comedy Diamantino with Daniel Schmidt, the film has the following synopsis: When Edward’s search for his biological family leads him and his girlfriend Ryley to a magnificent villa high in the mountains of Northern Portugal, he is full of excitement at meeting his long-lost mother and twin brother. Finally, he will discover who he is and where he comes from. But nothing is as it seems, and Edward...
- 2/1/2024
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
"This vision that haunts you. It just means you're part of this family." Magnolia Pictures has revealed an official trailer for an indie horror film from Portugal titled Amelia's Children, set for release in March in the US. This already opened in Portugal in January after premiering there at a genre festival last year. The latest from the filmmaker behind Diamantino. When Edward's search for his biological family leads him to a remote, mysterious villa in the mountains in Northern Portugal, he's thrilled to meet his long-lost mother and twin brother. However, he soon learns that he's linked to them by a scary monstrous secret. The horror film stars Brigette Lundy-Paine, Carloto Cotta, Anabela Moreira, Alba Baptista, and Rita Blanco. This doesn't look as good as it should, too many underlit scenes and generic scares about creepy family ties. // Continue Reading ›...
- 1/31/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
- 9/18/2023
- by Screen staff
- ScreenDaily
Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
- 9/14/2023
- by Screen staff
- ScreenDaily
Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
- 9/14/2023
- by Screen staff
- ScreenDaily
Stars: João Arrais, Anabela Moreira, Gustavo Sumpta, Leonor Silveira, Miguel Amorim, Ivo Arroja, André Cabral, João Cachola, Vicente Gil | Written and Directed by Carlos Conceicao
For me, it can only be a good thing when I say that Tommy Guns is like no film I have ever seen before. It covers several genres and with the genre shifts, almost feels like it’s changing the story each time – whether it covers wartime drama, zombie flick or art house, it’s always engaging.
The story begins in 1974, just one year before the country’s independence from decades of Portuguese rule. Wealthy colonists are fleeing the country as Angolan revolutionaries gradually claim their land back. A tribal girl discovers love and danger when her path crosses that of a Portuguese soldier. Another group of soldiers, completely cut off from the outside world, blindly follow the brutal orders of their commander in the name of serving their country.
For me, it can only be a good thing when I say that Tommy Guns is like no film I have ever seen before. It covers several genres and with the genre shifts, almost feels like it’s changing the story each time – whether it covers wartime drama, zombie flick or art house, it’s always engaging.
The story begins in 1974, just one year before the country’s independence from decades of Portuguese rule. Wealthy colonists are fleeing the country as Angolan revolutionaries gradually claim their land back. A tribal girl discovers love and danger when her path crosses that of a Portuguese soldier. Another group of soldiers, completely cut off from the outside world, blindly follow the brutal orders of their commander in the name of serving their country.
- 4/18/2023
- by Alain Elliott
- Nerdly
"S'kwata! S'kwata! S'kwata!" Kino Lorber has revealed the official trailer for a film titled Tommy Guns, made by up-and-coming filmmaker Carlos Conceição. Winner of Best European Film Award at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival, Tommy Guns has elicited comparisons to the work of Claire Denis, Miguel Gomes, and even M. Night Shyamalan, and it announces a bold and exciting new voice in Portuguese and Angolan filmmaking. Described as an "ambitious and exquisitely crafted genre-fluid fantasia." In 1974, after years of civil war, the Portuguese and descendants fled the colony of Angola (in Central Africa) where independentist groups gradually claimed their territory back. A tribal girl discovers love and death when her path crosses that of a young Portuguese soldier. Meanwhile, another group of Portuguese soldiers is barracked inside an infinite wall from which they will have to escape once from the past comes out of the grave to claim its long-awaited justice.
- 3/16/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Misery loves company, which may account for Portuguese director João Canijo’s decision to split his angst-ridden hotel-set project into two complementary films. Both were selected for the Berlinale, with the half centered on the hotel guests (“Living Bad”) landing in the Encounters section, and “Bad Living,” which revolves around the hotel staff, taking a main competition slot. It makes reviewing one without reference to the other something of an exercise in shadowboxing, especially when, as in “Bad Living,” the minute observation of its deteriorating female relationships could have used some kind of counterpoint, if only to make an unremittingly bleak, fractious 127 minutes pass a little faster. They may work in hospitality, but the women of “Bad Living” live in a draining, near-permanent state of hostility.
The heartbreak hotel location is perhaps the film’s biggest star. It’s a large, modern building, though not so modern that it doesn...
The heartbreak hotel location is perhaps the film’s biggest star. It’s a large, modern building, though not so modern that it doesn...
- 2/25/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Portuguese auteur Joao Canijo (Blood of My Blood) arrives at the 2023 Berlinale with not just one but two films — a diptych shot in the same hotel location with overlapping characters. Bad Living (Mal Viver) focuses largely on the women who own and run the hotel, while its companion, Living Bad (Viver Mal), centers on some of the hotel’s guests. (Both films unfold within the same time frame.) Full disclosure: I have not seen Living Bad, but given that Bad Living was selected for the festival’s main competition presumably it was deemed to be the stronger work. One can only shudder to imagine what an ordeal Living Bad must be to endure. Punishingly slow, grandiloquently depressing and ultimately not even especially convincing psychologically, Bad Living feels like the work of people who sincerely believed they were making great art. Sadly, they were mistaken.
Bad Living assembles a procession of mostly static,...
Bad Living assembles a procession of mostly static,...
- 2/21/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Portuguese auteur João Canijo (San Sebastián winner “Blood of My Blood”) has a brace of films at the Berlin Film Festival in 2023. “Bad Living” is in competition while its companion piece “Living Bad” is in the Encounters strand.
“Bad Living” follows five conflicted women who are operating an old family-run hotel, trying to save it from going under. The unexpected arrival of a granddaughter to this oppressive space stirs trouble, reviving latent hatred and piled-up resentments. “Living Bad,” which plays out like the reverse shot of “Bad Living,” follows the stories of three groups of guests in the same hotel with glimpses of what transpires in the first film.
The genesis of the films go back to “Blood of My Blood” (2011), where the lives of a family living in the outskirts of Lisbon are disrupted within a short period of time.
“‘Blood of My Blood’ was supposed to be two...
“Bad Living” follows five conflicted women who are operating an old family-run hotel, trying to save it from going under. The unexpected arrival of a granddaughter to this oppressive space stirs trouble, reviving latent hatred and piled-up resentments. “Living Bad,” which plays out like the reverse shot of “Bad Living,” follows the stories of three groups of guests in the same hotel with glimpses of what transpires in the first film.
The genesis of the films go back to “Blood of My Blood” (2011), where the lives of a family living in the outskirts of Lisbon are disrupted within a short period of time.
“‘Blood of My Blood’ was supposed to be two...
- 2/20/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
One of the most fascinating, ambitious cinematic projects premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival this month comes from Portuguese director João Canijo, who will be debuting a pair of connected films in different sections. First up, his Competition selection Mal Viver (Bad Living) draws inspiration from the plays of Strindberg and films of Rivette in telling the story of five women who are running a decaying hotel. Then the Encounters election Viver Mal (Living Bad) is set in the same location, but from the viewpoint of the guests. Ahead of the premieres, we’re thrilled to exclusively debut the first trailers.
With the same creative team behind both films, including cinematographer Leonor Teles, editor João Braz, sound team of Elsa Ferreira and Tiago Raposinho, production designer Nádia Henriques, and costumer designer Silvia Siopa, the cast of Mal Viver features Anabela Moreira, Rita Blanco, Madalena Almeida, Cleia Almeida, and Vera Barreto,...
With the same creative team behind both films, including cinematographer Leonor Teles, editor João Braz, sound team of Elsa Ferreira and Tiago Raposinho, production designer Nádia Henriques, and costumer designer Silvia Siopa, the cast of Mal Viver features Anabela Moreira, Rita Blanco, Madalena Almeida, Cleia Almeida, and Vera Barreto,...
- 2/10/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The Berlin Film Festival on Monday unveiled the titles selected for its official competition as well as its sidebar Encounters competitive section.
A total of 18 films have been selected for the international competition with highlights including Christian Petzold’s latest film Roter Himmel (Afire), Margarethe von Trotta directing Phantom Thread star Vicky Krieps in Ingeborg Bachmann — Journey Into the Desert, and Philippe Garrel returns with a new feature titled The Plough.
Scroll down for the full lineup.
This morning the festival also revealed an extra special screening: Actor and filmmaker Sean Penn will debut a documentary titled Superpower, a film shot in Ukraine last year at the outbreak of Russia’s invasion and follows president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 16-26.
Organizers have already announced more than 100 titles across sidebars spanning Panorama, Forum, and Berlinale Special. The festival had initially done a good job of increasing...
A total of 18 films have been selected for the international competition with highlights including Christian Petzold’s latest film Roter Himmel (Afire), Margarethe von Trotta directing Phantom Thread star Vicky Krieps in Ingeborg Bachmann — Journey Into the Desert, and Philippe Garrel returns with a new feature titled The Plough.
Scroll down for the full lineup.
This morning the festival also revealed an extra special screening: Actor and filmmaker Sean Penn will debut a documentary titled Superpower, a film shot in Ukraine last year at the outbreak of Russia’s invasion and follows president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 16-26.
Organizers have already announced more than 100 titles across sidebars spanning Panorama, Forum, and Berlinale Special. The festival had initially done a good job of increasing...
- 1/23/2023
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Portugal’s colonial past in Africa continues to haunt some of the country’s most vital and subversive filmmakers. With his remarkable second feature “Tommy Guns,” Angolan-Portuguese director Carlos Conceição’s steps into the same precarious territory sometimes occupied by Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes — borrowing, perhaps, a measure of the former’s visceral austerity and the latter’s shape-shifting playfulness, but mostly proving his own sly, supple talent. Formally and structurally audacious in ways that build in power and meaning as the film unfolds, this study of a Portuguese military squad gradually unraveling in a remote, bloodied wilderness begins with a clear sense of time, place and space, before collapsing those certainties in a horror-tinged nightmare that nods to the sprawling impact of colonialism across eras.
That brush of genre influence — comparable, in its subtle, dimension-twisting fluidity, to Mati Diop’s recent “Atlantics” — ought to heighten interest around “Tommy Guns...
That brush of genre influence — comparable, in its subtle, dimension-twisting fluidity, to Mati Diop’s recent “Atlantics” — ought to heighten interest around “Tommy Guns...
- 8/9/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Shooting is set to start in April in 10 different municipalities of Portugal. Ten adaptations of Portuguese literary works, directed by ten female directors, shot in ten municipalities: such is the concept behind Told by Women, a co-production by Ukbar Filmes, RTP1 and Krakow Film Klaster. A project which, according to producers Pandora da Cunha Telles and Pablo Iraola, is an “unprecedented empowerment program that will allow ten talented professionals to reach national and international markets.” According to Ukbar’s press release, this is also an attempt to enrich the market “with dynamic audiovisual works,” whilst also trying to fix “the asymmetry” experienced by female directors when trying “to access the audiovisual field.”Actresses Anabela Moreira, Ana Cunha, Cristina Carvalhal, Daniela Ruah and Maria João Luís, producer Sofia Teixeira Gomes and directors Diana Antunes, Fabiana Tavares, Laura Seixas and Rita Barbosa accepted Ukbar Filmes’ challenge to direct these television films that represent.
Points for originality should go to “Diamantino,” an amusing but scattershot comedy that revolves around a world-famous Portuguese soccer star patterned in part on Cristiano Ronaldo. Co-directed and written by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, this is a film that takes a lot of chances with its tone as it moves from farcical moments to scenes with earnest political messages.
Diamantino (Carloto Cotta) is a national idol on the soccer field, and whenever he scores a goal he sees enormous fluffy puppies surrounding him. This imagery of the giant puppies is funny because they’re so obviously meant to be small and harmless pets, and here they’re seen stomping around like dinosaurs. These giant fluffy puppies are an apt symbol of Diamantino himself, a sports God who is so absurdly innocent that he can be used by anyone around him for either good or bad purposes.
Diamantino is inspired...
Diamantino (Carloto Cotta) is a national idol on the soccer field, and whenever he scores a goal he sees enormous fluffy puppies surrounding him. This imagery of the giant puppies is funny because they’re so obviously meant to be small and harmless pets, and here they’re seen stomping around like dinosaurs. These giant fluffy puppies are an apt symbol of Diamantino himself, a sports God who is so absurdly innocent that he can be used by anyone around him for either good or bad purposes.
Diamantino is inspired...
- 5/21/2019
- by Dan Callahan
- The Wrap
"Something magical happened when I played." Kino Lorber has debuted an official Us trailer for the wacky, brilliant, one-of-a-kind "high camp" indie comedy Diamantino, from directors Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt. This Portuguese film premiered in the Critics' Week sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and stopped by a bunch of major film festivals throughout the film. "Tabu's Carloto Cotta gives the finest comic performance in recent memory as the dimwitted Portuguese soccer superstar of the title, a burlesqued version of Cristiano Ronaldo, swept up in a complicated comic conundrum involving the refugee crisis, Secret Service skullduggery, mad science genetic modification, and a right-wing anti-EU conspiracy." This is easily one of the most creative, original, and hilarious films I saw last year and I definitely recommend it - a "high-camp" international discovery that will be a cult classic very soon. Also stars Cleo Tavares, Anabela Moreira, Margarida Moreira,...
- 5/6/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Review by Peter BelsitoPortuguese soccer icon Diamantino is the most famous person in the world.
So the film begins. And gets crazier as it moves along but in a very funny way.
After blowing his team’s chances at the 2018 World Cup, Portuguese soccer icon Diamantino retreats in shame to his amazing palatial home. Bereft of purpose, confused and desperate to atone for his act of national humiliation, he is convinced to adopt an African refugee youth in a naive attempt to reinject meaning into his shattered life.
While awaiting the arrival of his new son, he becomes the unwitting victim of a government tax investigation, a neo-fascist plot to seize power, and the daily machinations of his cartoonishly villainous twin sisters.
It doesn’t happen that often that when you see something that takes you completely by surprise.
Diamantino, from the directorial duo of Gabriel Abrantes from Portugal and U.
So the film begins. And gets crazier as it moves along but in a very funny way.
After blowing his team’s chances at the 2018 World Cup, Portuguese soccer icon Diamantino retreats in shame to his amazing palatial home. Bereft of purpose, confused and desperate to atone for his act of national humiliation, he is convinced to adopt an African refugee youth in a naive attempt to reinject meaning into his shattered life.
While awaiting the arrival of his new son, he becomes the unwitting victim of a government tax investigation, a neo-fascist plot to seize power, and the daily machinations of his cartoonishly villainous twin sisters.
It doesn’t happen that often that when you see something that takes you completely by surprise.
Diamantino, from the directorial duo of Gabriel Abrantes from Portugal and U.
- 1/20/2019
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
AFI Fest’s World Cinema section unveiled Tuesday includes seven films that have been officially submitted for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, from Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum and Matteo Garrone’s Dogman to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away and the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda. Directors in the slate include Jafar Panahi, Jia Zhang-ke, Hong Sang-soo, Olivier Assayas, Carlos Reygadas, László Nemes and Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
The lineup includes 28 titles from 27 countries. The fest runs November 8-15 and opens with the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex and closes with Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots. In the mix too are a host of gala presentations featuring Bird Box, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Widows, Green Book and Destroyer. The latter pic will be screened as part of a tribute to its star Nicole Kidman.
Here’s the full World...
The lineup includes 28 titles from 27 countries. The fest runs November 8-15 and opens with the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex and closes with Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots. In the mix too are a host of gala presentations featuring Bird Box, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Widows, Green Book and Destroyer. The latter pic will be screened as part of a tribute to its star Nicole Kidman.
Here’s the full World...
- 10/16/2018
- by Patrick Hipes
- Deadline Film + TV
Bloodletting: Canijo’s Latest a Masterwork of Familial Upheaval
Portuguese director Joao Canijo returns with his eighth feature, Blood of My Blood, (his first fictional outing since 2007’s Misbegotten) a sprawling, all consuming portrait of one week in the life a matriarchal run familial unit in the slums outside Lisbon, and may indeed be his masterpiece. Inevitably, there’s no denying a comparison of technique with Altman and Mike Leigh (Canijo spent two years developing the characters with the actors via a series of workshops as Leigh does), but the film stands quite firmly as an often uncomfortable, unpleasant, and always fascinating family saga that would, in a fair world, finally open up the English speaking market to Canijo’s previous directorial efforts, which date back to the early 80s.
In Padre Cruz, a slum on the edge of Lisbon, the Fialho clan, whose workable, but makeshift daily existence is about to be severely shaken.
Portuguese director Joao Canijo returns with his eighth feature, Blood of My Blood, (his first fictional outing since 2007’s Misbegotten) a sprawling, all consuming portrait of one week in the life a matriarchal run familial unit in the slums outside Lisbon, and may indeed be his masterpiece. Inevitably, there’s no denying a comparison of technique with Altman and Mike Leigh (Canijo spent two years developing the characters with the actors via a series of workshops as Leigh does), but the film stands quite firmly as an often uncomfortable, unpleasant, and always fascinating family saga that would, in a fair world, finally open up the English speaking market to Canijo’s previous directorial efforts, which date back to the early 80s.
In Padre Cruz, a slum on the edge of Lisbon, the Fialho clan, whose workable, but makeshift daily existence is about to be severely shaken.
- 11/4/2012
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.