Simon Chama Simon Chama

Mensagem do Realizador Director Statement
It was when I moved into a new house and found out that my parents were splitting up that I remember starting to feel adolescence, and with it a deep sense of injustice. This passive-aggressive rage struck me during this youthtime without me ever quite realizing why. Hear the phrase “Such a beautiful girl talking like that…” was recurrent in family reunions. I still keep all my escape plans, even though I was never able to execute any of them, and maybe that was the origin of my frustration. Already in college, and after the 1st year of my bachelor of arts, I left Lisbon’s Theater and Cinema School and went to Denmark, where I continued to study cinema for another year. As a result, the physical and emotional distancing from my family became a cathartic experience, and for the first time I distanced myself from this state that was defining me. Such a feeling of injustice might not have been so certain. Maybe there weren’t truths as absolute as I thought. The idea for the film was born when, at 21, I came back and felt an immense need to, more than share, explore the meaning of this. Because everything had been so intense for so long, but more than that, for things to gain new meanings while I thought about them. I remembered moments in detail, had enough material to recreate situations and for the first time I had the opportunity to look at them from an outside perspective. I was enthusiastic when I thought this could alter, on a deeper level, my understanding of the world, all the pillars of undisputed certainties were coming down and the risk, mixed with adrenaline, in building new and different pillars led me into a goal. The film would have to show an idea of liberation. Joana Peralta and Pedro Cabeleira motivated me to start shooting some scenes, without having to wait for the “right” moment. Pedro was already filming his “Damned Summer” and showed me that it was possible to do it. At the time I had some saving, and in an impromptu meeting in an old Laboratory, in Graça, Lisbon, on the 1st day of 2015, we decided to move forward. The script began as a set of short films, each without temporal or spatial connection with the previous one, but all of them revolved around the same characters. It was not an easy process, because dealing with things so close to me, often led to difficulties in their deepening, and this even delayed the schedule of shootings. Therefore, the first scenes were worked in the set itself, in a kind of improvisation mode, even more on my part than on the part of the actors, in which each take would receive new inputs; we were creating the characters and situations in the moment, fleeing from any kind of intellectualization. Even the camera became a kind of a body in the mist of that controlled chaos. The shot and planning was done and defined in the moment, because I felt that defining things in advance would only suffocate the film, or myself.

Biografia do Realizador Director Biography

Marta Sousa Ribeiro was born in Lisbon (1992). In 2011 interrupted her studies at Lisbon’s Theatre and Film School, and later directed her first short-film YELLOWBLUEBLACKYELLOW. In 2012 enrolled in the European Film College, in Denmark, and directed her second short-film FOUR FLOORS (2013). Back in Lisbon, co-directed the animated short-film WHY NOT CIRCLES INSTEAD OF SQUARES? (2013) with Joana Peralta. Was a first-time producer for CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER (2014), directed by José Miguel Ribeiro. In the same year co-founded, together with Joana Peralta and Pedro Cabeleira, the cinema & video production company VIDEOLOTION, and in 2017 they released their first feature, DAMNED SUMMER (Special Mention – Cineasti del Presente at Locarno IFF), directed by Pedro Cabeleira and produced by himself and Marta. In 2018 VIDEOLOTION produced its first web series, SUBSOLO, each episode directed by a different director, having Marta directed the 5th episode of the season, JÚLIA. She co-directed, with Joana Peralta, the 13th episode of the children animated TV series CUBS (2019), also produced by VIDEOLOTION, and co-produced by Praça Filmes (PT) and JPL Filmes (FR) (Annecy 2019). She was also Executive Producer of the video-installations THE GARDEN OF THE FORKING PATHS (2016) and ALEPH (2019), both works from João Cristóvão Leitão; Executive Producer of the shorts YOU SEE THE MOON (2018), directed by Miguel Nunes (CPH:DOX 2019), and SALSA (2019), directed by Igor Dimitri (IFF Rotterdam 2019); Executive Producer of the documentary feature AMA ROMANTA, directed by Vasco Bação (2019) (Indie Lisboa 2019); Executive Producer of the documentary web series MY OWN BLOOD (2020), directed by Tota Alves & Víctor Ferreira. Parallely directed and produced a number of other projects, from videoclips to promotional videos. She premiered her first feature film as a director, SIMON CALLS (VIDEOLOTION), in San Sebastián IFF, which has also won the Eurimages Lab Project Award.

Distribuição Distribution
.