The End of the World / O Fim do Mundo
Gothenburg
Sat 19 Nov
16:00 — Hagabion
Stockholm
Fri 2 Dec
18:30 — Zita
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PRODUCTION YEAR: 2019
GENRE: Fiction
DIRECTOR: Basil da Cunha
COUNTRY: Switzerland
CAST: Michael Spencer, Marco Joel Fernandes, Alexandre Da Costa Fonseca, Iara Cristina Cardoso, Luisa Martins Dos Santos
FILM DURATION: 107 min
AGE LIMIT: 16
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After eight years in a correctional school, Spira returns to Reboleira, a slum which is being demolished in the Lisbon suburbs. While he goes back to his friends and family, Kikas, one of the neighbourhood’s old drug dealers, makes it clear that he is not welcome.
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LANGUAGE: Creoule, Portuguese
SUBTITLES: English
Review
O Fim do Mundo (The End of the World, 2019) is Basil da Cunha's second feature film, six years after Até ver a Luz (After the Night, 2013). The time in between these two movies was spent writing several other projects and filming a series with many of the friends, inhabitants of Reboleira's neighbourhood, that are the actors in this film. So, although Cunha's films are post classical in the sense of having a written detailed screenplay, the fact that he uses mostly people he already knows in his life, prompts the happy accidents in the shooting, predicting many reactions for each scene and using his tense camerawork in the context of heavy improvisation. O Fim do Mundo is also post classical in a larger sense, since some of its inspirations are Scorsese and Coppola's works, as well as the comedy of buddy movies such as in Lethal Weapon (1987), or the ironic hang-over anti-heroes of Bruce Willis’ action films in the 90's. He openly wants his family, but also his larger family (the actors and crew in the film) to go to the cinema and amuse themselves.
Although his films are popular - he particularly wants to inject, whenever possible, a lyrical dimension, something akin to magical realism - there is also an authorial ambition as well. For instance, while O Fim do Mundo is filmed in scope, a take on genre film with an apocalyptic dimension, it also works as a fictional tale of coming of age, that tells us something about the imminent disappearance of Reboleira, a social neighbourhood that the City Council wants to tear down. That end of the world also means the end of a space of communion, friendship, sticking together when there are problems to solve. Rui Xavier's incredible cinematography work crafts an almost futuristic element to the Reboleira "set", that conveys the emotions of its characters, especially the protagonist Spira (Michel Spencer). In this sense, Cunha's work – vital to which are his years spent as a kid with his father in Switzerland, getting to know the Portuguese community in the local Portuguese Center - is truly a collaborative, celebratory process of familial community spaces. Filming faces, gestures, conversations shaped over years of interaction are key to a real documentarian feeling of relationships within Reboleira, even in the most evident set up of pop tragedy fiction.
Carlos Natálio
À pala de Walsh