Greek-Portuguese author and director Paulo Marinou-Blanco (Empty Hands, Goodnight Irene) screened Dreaming of Lions, his absurdist black comedy movie about assisted suicide and euthanasia, within the 10:30 p.m. slot on the fourth version of the Red Sea International Film Festival on Friday night time. But the cinema in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s Culture Square, its “new residence of movie,” was packed, and the viewers reacted with a lot applause after experiencing the tragicomic rollercoaster trip that the film supplies.
Brazil’s Denise Fraga (The Other End) leads the solid of the movie, which premiered on the latest Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, alongside 2022 European Film Promotion Shooting Star João Nunes Monteiro from Portugal. Asun Planas, Dinarte Freitas, António Durães, Alexander Tuji, Victoria Guerra, Sandra Faleiro, Joana Ribeiro (The Man Who Fell to Earth), and Roberto Bomtempo spherical out the solid.
Dreaming of Lions is the story of Gilda (Fraga), a terminally in poor health lady whose dying want is for her painful existence to cease as shortly and peacefully as doable. When her makes an attempt at ending her life fail, she seeks skilled assist and discovers an organization referred to as Joy Transition International the place she meets Amadeu, who determined to turn out to be a mortician after his dad and mom died in a “selfie-related accident.” When they’ve to interact in all kinds of ridiculous actions and she or he finds out that the group will not be what it appears, they’ve to contemplate taking issues into their very own palms.
“It comes from private experiences, a few of them associated to my household,” Marinou-Blanco tells THR. “My father was in poor health for a very long time in hospital however with no proper to die. So he simply saved being saved alive. And he was a form of traditional Southern European life lover and simply didn’t need to drag issues on. He simply needed to go. He simply needed to have the ability to die peacefully however he didn’t have that chance.”
At that point, the director’s father couldn’t converse anymore. “All he might do was sing,” Marinou-Blanco recollects. “And there may be this track within the movie that’s one thing that he would really sing to us. It’s referred to as ‘Maracangalha.’ It’s very well-known in Brazil.”
And it’s about a spot in Bahia, Brazil. The filmmaker knew it however lengthy thought that it was an imaginary place. “It wasn’t only a private connection to my father. It additionally felt symbolical, which was wonderful, as a result of it’s form of ‘I’m going to Maracangalha,’ prefer it’s a spot after life that we don’t know what it’s,” the director shares. But as he was ending the movie, a Brazilian producer pal from Bahia advised him it was an actual place that he used to truly go to. “Then he confirmed me on Google Maps, and there it was,” Marinou-Blanco mentioned with a chuckle. “It’s a tiny, one-road city that really exists.”
His private expertise additionally performs into the conception of the movie and the character of Amadeu. “My private expertise, which can also be tragicomic, is that I went via a interval, like everybody does, of being considerably depressed,” Marinou-Blanco explains. “And I had insomnia, similar to Amadeu.” One day, he discovered and downloaded to his Kindle “a guide, coincidentally, about euthanasia strategies, comparable to self-termination strategies,” he shares. “And then one night time, I simply lay in mattress and began to learn, you already know, ‘put 10 milliliters of the answer into water,’ and I sleep like a child and don’t have any extra insomnia.”
It was a key second. “In a approach, for me that was the primary level the place I obtained the concept for this movie, as a result of I spotted that irrespective of how dangerous issues are, you select to dwell. It’s not an obligation,” Marinou-Blanco says. “You’re not condemned to it. It’s a alternative, irrespective of how dangerous issues get. You really can select to face them or not, and unexpectedly, that simply provides you extra braveness by some means – the truth that you’re free. It’s not a jail, it’s not a sentence to dwell. And in order that was the primary stepping stone, together with my father’s expertise.”
Funding for the mission was simpler than chances are you’ll assume. “The first time I utilized for funding with the script, we obtained it in Portugal,” the author and director tells THR. “Most folks actually linked with the script. Obviously, there have been some rejections alongside the way in which, nevertheless it wasn’t that onerous.”
The movie’s title is a reference to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, wherein the character Santiago desires of lions as a logo of misplaced youth. “Titles are troublesome,” Marinou-Blanco says. “I linked with this picture of peace, of serenity, of happiness as one thing that Jill the desires, proper? So one thing that Gilda by no means had, or doesn’t have now and is aspiring to have it.”
The filmmaker has shared through the pageant that his mom has been bed-ridden for a number of years. So what was her response to Dreaming of Lions? “For a very long time, she didn’t need to learn the script. But then, she noticed the finished movie, and with tears, she simply form of hugged me,” Marinou-Blanco recollects. “That was it. And she mentioned, ‘Thank you.’ Because the character of Gilda can also be primarily based slightly bit on her, particularly that power, that zeal for all times she has.”
