A Persona Non Grata Pictures highlighted that the feature film was recognized by the festival’s official jury for “the originality and subtlety with which the script addresses issues of aging.”
The script was written by the director himself and co-writer Tiago Cravidão, the production company stated in a press release.
“This is a film about empathy, about learning to see others through dialogue, not as a threat, but as someone who, like us, has desires and aspirations similar to ours, no matter how different we may seem,” said António Ferreira during the award ceremony.
The Tangier Film Festival took place from October 1 to 4.
‘A Memória do Cheiro das Coisas’ premieres in Portuguese cinemas on November 6.
The film had previously won, in June, the Best Actor award at the Shanghai International Film Festival in eastern China, for José Martins.
In the final scenes, José Martins plays “a veteran of the colonial war forced to enter a nursing home, where he faces the ghosts of his past and forms an unexpected bond with his Black caregiver,” according to the synopsis.
The film, a Portugal-Brazil co-production, is described as “a poetic and intimate portrait of an elderly man in an institution, exploring the fragility of the human condition, the inevitability of death, and the quest for redemption,” addressing “urgent societal issues such as population aging and structural racism.”
‘A Memória do Cheiro das Coisas’ was one of the 12 films selected for the official competition in the 27th edition of the Shanghai International Film Festival.
