The films “A Flor do Buriti”, “Grand Tour”, “Manga d’Terra”, “O teu rosto será o último” and “O vento whistando nas gruas” are up for a vote at the Portuguese Film Academy to be nominated for the 2025 Oscars.
The Portuguese Film Academy announced today that these five films are finalists and will now be put to a vote among its members, in order to choose Portugal’s candidate for an Oscar nomination for Best International Film in 2025.
These five films were selected by an academy committee from thirty feature films produced in Portugal and considered eligible, with a premiere date between November 1, 2023 and guaranteed by September 30 of this year.
Of the works selected, all have already been released in Portugal, except for “Grand Tour”, by Miguel Gomes, which will hit theaters on September 19.
The story of “Grand Tour” follows an early 20th century romance with Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a civil servant in the British Empire who runs away from his fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate) on the day she arrives for the wedding.
Miguel Gomes made a travel archive through Asia, passing through Myanmar (formerly Burma), Vietnam, Thailand and Japan, to trace the characters’ journeys, collecting contemporary images and sounds for a period feature film set in 1918. Only after this tour did he shoot the scenes with the actors in a studio in Rome.
“Grand Tour” earned Miguel Gomes the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in France.
“A Flor do Buriti” is a film by João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora and was shot in the indigenous territory of Kraholândia, in Brazil, where they had already made “Chuva é cantoria na aldeia dos mortos” (2019).
The narrative was built on historical accounts and conversations with indigenous people and won a Cast Award at Cannes 2023.
“Manga d’Terra” is Portuguese-Swiss director Basil da Cunha’s new foray into the social territory of Reboleira, in Amadora, and tells the story of Rosa (Eliana Rosa), a young Cape Verdean woman who loves to sing and leaves her children in the African archipelago while she tries her luck in Portugal.
“Your face will be the last” and “The wind whistling in the cranes” are two literary adaptations of novels by João Ricardo Pedro and Lídia Jorge, respectively.
From João Ricardo Pedro’s novel came a film by Luís Filipe Rocha about a young man, Duarte, who didn’t know how to deal with an extraordinary, innate ability to play the piano, which he also disowned because of the family circumstances in which he grew up.
Signed by Jeanne Waltz, a Swiss director who has lived in Portugal for a long time, “The Wind Whistling in the Cranes” follows Milene, a young woman who, after the death of her grandmother, is faced with a family of uncles who despise her because of a mental development problem.
In search of answers about her grandmother’s death, Milene goes to the disused premises of an old cannery, occupied by an emigrant Cape Verdean family, where she falls in love with Antonino Mata.
These five films were chosen by a committee made up of producer Andreia Nunes, director Cristèle Alves Meira, actress Binete Undonque, director of photography José Tiago, director Luís Galvão Teles, producer Pedro Borges, screenwriter Rita Benis, actor Rui Morrison and distributor Saúl Rafael.
The Portuguese Film Academy will announce Portugal’s nominee on September 11.
The 97th edition of the Oscars is scheduled for March 2, 2025 in Los Angeles, United States of America, and the nominees will be revealed on January 17.
According to the Portuguese Film Academy, Portugal has submitted a candidate for the Best International Film category every year since 1980. However, there has never been a Portuguese nominee in this category.
Apart from this selection process by the Portuguese Film Academy, it is possible for Portuguese cinema to enter the race for an Oscar nomination in other categories, depending on different eligibility criteria, such as the films winning awards at certain international festivals.
In the 2023 edition, for the first time a Portuguese production was nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category with “Ice Merchants”, by João Gonzalez, but did not win the golden statuette.
This year, the Portuguese short film “Um Caroço de Avocado”, by director Ary Zara, was a candidate for an Oscar nomination for Best Short Film (“Live Action Short Film”), but didn’t make it to the final nominations.
