Badajoz. Festival opens with the film "Revolution (without) Blood"

Seven Portuguese short films are competing in the 31st Iberian Film Festival (FIC), in Badajoz (Spain), which opens on Monday with the premiere in the neighboring country of the film “Revolução (sem) Sangue”, by Rui Pedro Sousa.

The festival will run until the 11th of this month and, in addition to being held in Badajoz, it will also take place in the towns of Olivença and San Vicente de Alcántara, the delegation in Lisbon of the Spanish Junta da Extremadura explained this Friday.

In a statement sent to the Lusa news agency, the same organization explained that the Portuguese film “Revolução (sem) Sangue”, which “ questions the official narrative of the Carnation Revolution ”, will open the event, on Monday, at the Teatro López de Ayala, in Badajoz.

The film “emerges onto the cinematographic scene as a courageous proposal that questions one of the great official narratives of Portugal’s recent history: that the Carnation Revolution, which brought democracy back to the country on April 25, 1974, was a peaceful process with no fatalities,” he said.

The film, which will be presented at the FIC by director Rui Pedro Sousa and actor Rafael Paes, intersects the stories of those who died in the events of April 25, 1974, as part of the attack by the political police of the Estado Novo dictatorship, the PIDE, on demonstrators.

The people portrayed are Fernando Giesteira, João Arruda, Fernando Reis and José Barneto, who were between 18 and 38 years old and were shot dead by the PIDE/DGS, on Rua António Maria Cardoso, in Lisbon, headquarters of the political police.

They are joined by António Lage, an employee of PIDE/DGS, who was shot by a soldier.

Regarding the official section of the festival, which received more than 1,200 works and selected 21 short films for competition, Portugal has “a prominent presence”, with five short films in competition, according to the same source.

“Porta-te bem”, by Joana Alves, which tells the story of Filomena who lives alone in a village in the rural interior of Portugal and has just discovered that she does not have much time left to live, is one of them, as is “O processo”, by Chico Noras, which reflects on the trivialization of the choice to die and the usefulness of each person according to their productivity.

Also in competition is Daniel Soares' latest work, “Bad for a moment”, which tells the story of a team building event that goes wrong and brings the owner of an architecture firm face-to-face with the lower-class neighborhood that his company is gentrifying.

Also in the competition are the short films by Gonçalo Almeida, entitled “Atom & Void”, which takes the audience to Valya's lair, where a repeated noise disturbs her life and pushes her into the unknown, and by Gonçalo Waddington, called “As we were recovering the mother”, about a father of four children who, after the death of his wife, hides in bed, in mourning, until the house goes into self-management mode.

The FIC also has a section for younger children, the Festival dos Miúdos, which features two other Portuguese short films: “UPS!”, by Galvão Bertazzi and Luís Canau, about a boy who lives surrounded by an oppressive cacophony of sounds, within a dysfunctional family, and “A menina com os olhos ocupados”, by André Carrilho, which tells the story of a girl who, even when she went out, was always distracted, with her eyes fixed on her cell phone.