Portuguese cinema continues to grow in international festivals. This Wednesday, the CPH:DOX competitive selection has been made public, selecting Tarrafal, the latest film by Pedro Neves, for the NEXT: WAVE competition, dedicated to emerging talents. It is the international premiere of the film after Tarrafal had a world premiere at the last Porto/Post/Doc, and the screening in the program Há Filmes na Baixa! with a great success of public. The film seeks to unravel the memories of the residents of Bairro S. João de Deus, one of Porto's mythical social districts. For Pedro Neves, it was interesting "to film this inexistence of a place, where nature took over space once inhabited, where the emptiness was imposed on the new and old inhabitants. I wanted to film those memories and those feelings before it all got lost."
The CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, is one of the most important documentary festivals, and will take place from 16 to 26 March in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is one of the most reputed film festivals, with a careful programme and a dedicated audience (more than 90.000 spectators).
Porto/Post/Doc hosted Tarrafal in its competition, where it garnered praise from international programmers who attended the festival. Its selection in CPH:DOX is a consequence of the visibility achieved in Porto. For that reason, the Porto/Post/Doc - Associação Cultural will now promote the national and international distribution of the film. In addition to the international festivals - whose circulation now begins in Copenhagen -, the film will be distributed on the film socities circuit, starting in March, traveling through several Portuguese cities.
Pedro Neves was born in Leiria in 1977. He has been a documentary filmmaker, a producer and a freelance journalist since 1999. In 2008 he founded the production company Red Desert Films. He won several awards and his documentaries were presented in more than 40 festivals around the world, including Clermont-Ferrand, Guadalajara, Doclisboa, Documenta Madrid, Curtas Vila do Conde, Kinoforum, among others. His filmography includes films like “Gazing Out to Sea” (80', 2007), “En la Barberia” (6', 2007) , “The Forgotten” (63',2009), ”Disagreements” (49', 2010), “Cold Water” (14', 2011), “The “Desert's Fox” (85', 2013). In 2014 he directed, with the support of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the short documentary “Inn”. In December 2014, the doc “Beyond our Means” (43') had its premiere in Porto/Post/Doc. In 2015 he directed and produced the documentary “Localism” (61'). “The Beach” (Doclisboa) is his last short and “Tarrafal” (91', 2016) his last feature documentary.
