PORTUGAL / 27 MIN / 2023 / FICTION / DCP 2K / 2.35:1 / 5.1 / COLOR
Subtitles available: English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
A teenager does a forced summer job on a forest watchtower, indifferent to the immigrant workers in the surrounding greenhouses. While searching for his lost watch, he ends finding himself in the side of the invisible ones.
Un adolescente obligado a trabajar durante el verano como guardian de una torre, indiferente a los trabajadores inmigrantes de la zona. Mientras busca su reloj, termina encontrándose del lado de los invisibles.
Festivals & Awards
FEST New Directors New Films 2023 (Portugal, 2023) – Winner Grand National Prize
FESTin Portuguese Language Festival 2023 (Portugal, 2023) – Winner Best Short Film
Play Film Festival (Portugal, 2024) – Winner Audience Awards +13
Cineuphoria Film Festival (Portugal, 2024) – Winner Best National Short Film, Best Actor, Short of the Year, Top of the Year
Cine Tendinha (Portugal, 2024) – Premio Mostrare Merito Social
Curt’Arruda Film Festival (Portugal, 2023)
Entre Olhares – Mostra de Cinema Português (Portugal, 2023)
Premios Curtas (Portugal, 2024) – 5 nominations.
Festival Politica (Portugal, 2024)
Shortcutz Lisboa (Portugal, 2024)
Shortcutz Ovar (Portugal, 2024)
DjarFogo International Film Festival (Cape Verde, 2023)
Fankeena Film Fest (Somalia, 2023)
BUFF Malmo Film Festival (Sweden, 2024) – ‘Short Film Panorama’
Director’s statement
Empathy for others (or lack thereof) is one of the indelible marks of human beings. Several factors and contexts determine the way in which man relates to beings of his own species. Ignorance and ethnic-cultural difference are risk factors for the peaceful coexistence of the human species, and violence often appears as a reflection of these factors. Monte Clérigo, bringing focus and perspective on the minority, aims to question the territorial privileges that exist in certain communities and that overlap with human rights. The fact that my own life has a history of a nomadic nature, of constant adaptations to new contexts and different communities – in 35 years I have lived in more than 20 homes, among 9 cities in 6 different countries – puts me on the side mostly with the perspective of those who arrive, who present themselves and who feel the need to connect. Xenophobia, due to fear of the other and the unknown, is a curiously more present and more popular topic in the daily lives of the Portuguese today (2023) than when I was a teenager. The growing populist wave that has been plaguing the world imposes the need to recover values of communion, understanding, acceptance before the other and before the unknown. Faced with the apparent cloud of regression that has plagued us, and as an aspiring filmmaker, I feel obliged to portray the collision of different communities in order to transmit the values that have guided the ambivalence of my journey as a citizen of the world. Monte Clérigo therefore starts from an idyllic setting, enchanted by the landscape and the raw nature that comprises it, to expose the tragedy that can arise from the collision of classes and different ethnic groups if we are led by indifference.
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cast
Gonçalo Almeida, Aayush Kandel
written and directed by
Luis Campos
producer
Luis Campos, Ana Almeida, Mário Patrocínio, Pedro Patrocínio, Humberto Rocha, Pedro Medeiros, Tiago Gomes
production companies
Matiné, Bro Cinema, Um Segundo Filmes, Corvo Film Company, with financial support from ICA - Instituto do Cinema e Audiovisual (Portuguese Film Institute)
1st AD
Luís Sérgio
cinematography
Pedro Patrocínio
set design
Inês Lebreaud
costumes
Graziele Sanches
make up
Rita Sousa
editing
Cláudia Silvestre
sound design
João Gazua
original music
Beato
distribution & world sales
luis' bio
Luis Campos (1985) is an awarded filmmaker, PhD in Media_Arts and alumni of EAVE Producers Workshop, Berlinale Talents, Rotterdam Lab, ZFF Academy, Locarno Match Me and ACE Producers Mentoring Programme. Founder of GUIÕES – Portuguese Language Screenplay Festival, PLOT – Professional Script Lab and DRAMA.pt, collected experiences in film development at renowned companies such as RT Features (Brazil) and Savage Film (Belgium). Was invited to be part of the jury/commission for the Portuguese Film Institute and to be part of the jury in international film festivals and script labs. Was the head of Film & Tv at BRO Cinema between 2018 and 2022 and part of SPi content department before fully dedicating to its own production company Matiné in 2023.