Vitalina Varela

An intricately crafted study of grief, despair, solitude and post-colonial exploitation that transcends all narrative, plot-development and character-building conventions, delivering a ruminative and emotive experience. Pedro Costa delves into the darkest depths of an abyss, a phantom-space of the living dead, of wandering human ghosts and lost souls born amidst the shadows. In a film that lives and breathes at nighttime, the black color is endowed with a sacred mission –both materially and spiritually– as much as the white color was to Dreyer or Bresson films.