At the Marrakesh Film Festival, Christelle Alves Mera's first feature film won the jury award headed by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino. At the Amiens Film Festival in France, “Alma Viva” received a special mention. These two awards are in addition to five others already announced this weekend at the Caminhos do Cinema Português festival in Coimbra.
At this festival, the film won awards for Best Direction, Original Screenplay, and Supporting Performance by Actress Ana Padrão, the Revelation Award for Loa Michel, and the International Federation of Film Associations Award.
Currently showing in Portuguese cinemas, “Alma Viva” focuses on Salomé, a young girl, the daughter of Portuguese immigrants to France, who spends the summer in a village with her grandmother, with whom she has a strong spiritual connection.
Salome will witness the death of her grandmother and suspects that she was poisoned by witchcraft at the hands of another woman in the village. As the family organizes the funeral, Salome believes that she is accompanied by her grandmother's spirit and tries to avenge her death.
The film is also a portrait of Portuguese migration, of families divided between those who stay and those who leave, and the complex social and economic differences that result.
The film's story is “entirely inspired by the powerful and mysterious stories I heard by fire. These stories are almost like the ancient memory of Portugal, which is the matrix of our culture and I wanted to go back to these traditions and tell these stories through them.” Cinema has to be about this transmission of culture,” Christel Alves Mera explained to Lusa last May, shortly before the premiere in Cannes.
Produced by Midas Filmes in co-production with France and Belgium, “Alma Viva” is Portugal’s entry into the 2023 Academy Awards.
