André Gil Mata
SOB A CHAMA DA CANDEIA / THE FLAME OF A CANDLE
Portugal, 2024, 109’
At the presence of the director
North of Portugal. Two women have shared their daily life for sixty years in a house of green azulejos, a garden, a magnolia. Rooms full of objects from past lives. Traces of time, gestures and affects. Here Alzira was born, lived and died; here she was a daughter, a mother and a grandmother; here she played as a child, learned the piano, and devoted herself to an austere husband. She lived all these years with Beatriz, the maid, to the point that today she can no longer stand her. Beatriz has devoted all her life to Alzira’s family. In the evening of their lives, Alzira, liberated by the death of her husband, makes a decision that belongs to her alone. “As for the spectators, I think I can manage to interest them if I succeed in aesthetically transforming Alzira’s life and turning it into a work of cinema.” (André Gil Mata)
Director, screenwriter, actor, and cinematographer André Gil Mata (São João da Madeira, Portugal) studied mathematics, photography and theatre. Gil Mata obtained his master’s degree in directing at Lisbon Theatre and Film School in 2012 and finished his PhD at Film Factory (Sarajevo) in 2016. In 2008, he co-founded the photography and film lab Átomo47 and the film production company Bando à Parte. In 2010 he was selected for the Berlinale Talent Campus. The Flame of a Candle is his eighth film.
script: André Gil Mata
director of photography: Frederico Lobo
production design: Sandra Neves
sound design: Thomas Van Pottelberge
editing: Claire Atherton
cast: Eva Ras, Márcia Breia, Catarina Carvalho Gomes
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