Presented at the Cannes Filmmaker's Fortnight 2023, Légua managed to capture the audience's attention and emotion thanks to his poignant story and natural presentation. Drama from the duo João Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis, to watch in the cinema.
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In an old mansion located in northern Portugal, Ana helps Emilia, an old housekeeper who continues to take care of a house whose owners no longer visit. Over the seasons, Anna's daughter, Monica, questions her mother's choices, and these three generations of women try to understand their place in a world in decline, where the cycle of life is only renewed after inevitable endings.
A sensitive portrait of a completely changing world
Légua is the name of the small village in northern Portugal where the family home was located and where João Miller Guerra spent several summers. After screening documentaries and his first feature film, Djon Africa, in competition at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2018, the director reunites with Philippa Rees for their second fantasy film.
In cinemas from December 13, this powerful drama, presented at the Filmmakers' Fortnight during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, paints the picture of a country in full evolution, through the portraits of two women from different generations.
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“As an adult, I began to think about the meaning of this palace, the lives of the people who lived there, the social and economic structures that supported it, and the human relationships that formed there.“, says the Portuguese co-director. This thinking deepened during conversations with Philippa, when she started frequenting this place“.
“When we started researching this film, we learned that the woman who had been taking care of the house all the time and also lived there had contracted the disease. It was her colleague who welcomed her so generously into her home. This gesture is the starting point for this film“.
In addition to offering insight and reflection on the importance of helping and accompanying the elderly in their final moments, these intimate chronicles, part of Portuguese realistic and rural cinema, address political issues.
By touching on class conflict as he reveals the two main heroines, servants who break the rules by starting to live in a bourgeois house segregated by its wealthy owners, Légua also wants to be a testament to a mutated heritage and region.
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Realistic, but with a real attention to detail in its presentation, this drama shines with the performances of its actors who wonderfully illustrate the doubts that drive them in a constantly moving reality.
Thus Carla Maciel, Fátima Soares, Vitoria Nogueira da Silva, Sara Machado, Paolo Calatri and Manuel Mozos succeed in revealing all their talents in front of the camera of a duo of directors that we will undoubtedly see and see again on a large scale. a screen.
Discover Légua now and exclusively in cinemas.
