Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 285: Sat Oct 12

Vitalina Varela (Costa, 2019): ICA Cinema, 5.45pm

63rd LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (2nd-13th October 2019) DAY 11

Every day (from October 2nd to October 13th) I will be selecting the London Film Festival choices you have a chance to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go to see them at the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if some of the recommended films are sold out by the time you read this as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is all the information you need about the best way to get tickets.

This film, from the Portuguese maestro Pedro Costa, is also being screened on October 13th at the Curzon Soho cinema at 3.30pm. You can find the full details here.

London Film Festival introduction:

In Pedro Costa’s 2014 drama Horse Money, Vitalina Varela made a memorable appearance, effectively playing herself. In this follow-up – less a sequel than a deeper pursuit of its themes and motifs – Varela steps into the foreground as a woman who, after years waiting for a plane ticket, arrives in Portugal three days after her husband’s funeral. A mesmerising contemplation of race, grief and exile, the film is magnificently photographed by Leonardo Simões, with a visual signature of velvet-dark night in crumbling backstreets, and human presences that acquire the grandeur of classical statuary. With its incantatory dialogue, this is essentially an opera without music, with Varela as a mightily imposing central figure alongside Costa’s ever-present everyman hero Ventura.
Jonathan Romney

Here (and above) is the trailer.