The programme, on the 9th of November, begins with a session with Willem Dafoe, who returns to the festival for the fifth time to lead the masterclass Working with Lars von Trier, at 11 am at Cinema Medeia Nimas. As part of the complete retrospective dedicated to the Danish filmmaker, the session offers an opportunity to reflect on the creative relationship between actor and director.
The (i)moralidades cycle continues at Cinema Medeia Nimas at 1 pm with Love Letter, by Kinuyo Tanaka. Made in 1953 and presented here in a digitally restored version, the film invites audiences to rediscover the work of a filmmaker whose importance in the history of Japanese cinema deserves greater recognition. The cycle questions the moral codes that govern social life, and the ease with which established conventions come to be accepted as indisputable truths.
At 2 pm, in Sala Manoel de Oliveira of Cinema São Jorge, Salvation, Emin Alper’s new film, will be screened. The film premiered at the most recent edition of the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.
The afternoon is marked by the presence of Kelly Reichardt, to whom the festival pays tribute, at 5 pm, at Cinema São Jorge, for the screening of First Cow. Set in the nineteenth century, the film follows the relationship between a travelling cook and a Chinese immigrant in the still-emerging territory of the American West. Friendship, precarity and the possibility of building a life together lie at the heart of a narrative attentive to quiet forms of cooperation and to the economic mechanisms that determine who gets to prosper.
At 6 pm, Culturgest hosts a screening of The French Teacher, by Ricardo Alves Jr., followed by a conversation with actress Grace Passô. Graça lives in Belo Horizonte, where she gives private French lessons and shares her life with her French girlfriend. When a health emergency involving her father brings her back to her childhood home, she is confronted with a community intent on forcing her back into the role it has reserved for her. The film explores the conflict between individual freedom and the social and religious forces that seek to constrain it.
At the heart of Musk, Alex Gibney’s documentary, screening at 7 pm at Culturgest, is the concentration of power in the hands of one of the most influential figures in contemporary technology. At the same time, Cinema NOS Vasco da Gama presents The Boss of It All, by Lars von Trier, with actress Louise Mieritz in attendance. At 7.30 pm, at Cinema São Jorge, Sophie Letourneur joins the screening of Gaby Baby Doll, as part of the retrospective dedicated to the French filmmaker.
At 8 pm, in the Grande Auditório – Emílio Rui Vilar, the second volume of Nymphomaniac will be screened as part of the Lars von Trier Tribute, followed by a conversation with director Manuel Alberto Claro. Also featured as part of this tribute is Edvard Munch, by Peter Watkins, one of the films that served as a major reference for the Danish filmmaker. The film will be screened at Teatro do Bairro, at 8 pm.
At 9 pm, Cinema Medeia Nimas screens Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, by Pier Paolo Pasolini, in a screening introduced by Abel Ferrara and Béatrice Dalle. Set in the Republic of Salò, Italy, the film follows four men who subject a group of young people to a regime of violence and humiliation. Pasolini’s final film transposes the work of the Marquis de Sade to the context of fascism, offering one of cinema’s most radical indictments of power and of the reduction of human bodies to objects of control. Also at 9:00 pm, at Culturgest’s Small Auditorium, Siempre soy tu animal materno, by Valentina Maurel, will be screened in competition in the Discoveries section, in a screening attended by the director.
The full programme for the 9th of November is available on LEFFEST’s website.