TEHRAN – Movies acclaimed at various editions of Portugal’s Doclisboa International Film Festival will be reviewed in a special section at the 15th edition of Cinéma Vérité, Iran’s major international festival for documentary films.

The program features “Breeding Ground”, “Rio Torto”, “Terra” (“Earth”) and “Perpetual Person”. 

“Breeding Ground” directed by Pedro Felipe Marques, received the Doclisboa Award for best Portuguese film at the 17th Doclisboa International Film Festival in 2019.

This film shows the Arcozelo football field is battered by the North wind from Sunday to Sunday. The lawn has to be swept and lots of clothes washed. - The boys are coming. - The two equipment managers, São and Cunha, know the names of the little players. Everyone is taken care of and the socks drying on the goals are also to be lent.

The short documentary “Rio Torto” by Portuguese filmmaker Mário Veloso is about a vanishing generation that provides a final account of a healthy river and drinking water in a place where the bucolic landscape merges with urban sprawl and one of the ancient mills keeps on spinning.

The film Midas Filmes and DocLisboa Award for best Portuguese first film and the Pedro Fortes Award for Best Green Years Portuguese Film at the same edition of the Doclisboa festival.

“Terra” has been co-directed by Hiroatsu Suzuki from Japan and Portuguese filmmaker Rossana Torres. It was selected as the best Portuguese film at the Doclisboa festival in 2020.
 
This documentary depicts events somewhere in the Alentejo, where there are two large earth covered kilns by which a man makes charcoal. Essential elements like fire, water, air, earth and space reflect, breathe and celebrate the rhythm of the Earth.

Directed by Javier Bellido Valdivia from Peru, “Perpetual Person” is an intimate approach to the experience of Alzheimer’s disease in a 95-year-old woman and her relationship with her immediate surroundings. The tension between lucidity and dementia will shape a new notion of personhood, able to live and perceive the world in another way.

The film had its world premiere at the Doclisboa festival 2020.

Cinéma Vérité is organized by the Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC) every year in December.

Due to the pandemic, the international section of the 2020 edition was non-competitive. Like the previous edition, this year’s edition will also be held online from December 9 to 16.

Photo: A poster for a section of Iran’s Cinéma Vérité dedicated to reviewing top films acclaimed at Portugal’s Doclisboa International Film Festival. 

MMS/YAW