''Ossos'' (English: "Bones") is a 1997 Portuguese film directed by Pedro Costa. The film was shot in the Fontainhas district of

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

(also known as "Estrela d'Africa"), where disadvantaged dwellers and

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...

from former Portuguese colonies in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

live desperate lives. This

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

with some documentary elements made Pedro Costa acclaimed internationally. It was nominated for

Golden Lion The Golden Lion ( it, Leone d'oro) is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most prestigious and distinguishe ...

and won the best cinematography (

Golden Osella The Golden Osella is the name of several awards given at the Venice Film Festival. They are awarded irregularly and in various categories such as directing, screenwriting, cinematography, and technical contributions. The name derives from the ''o ...

) at the

Venice International Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival he ...

in 1997. He further dealt with the now-defunct shanty district in his next two films, ''

In Vanda's Room ''In Vanda's Room'' (Portuguese: ''No Quarto da Vanda'', 2000) is a docufiction (a subgenre of cinéma vérité) film by Portuguese director Pedro Costa. This is the second film in his Fontainhas trilogy. Overview The film follows the daily life ...

(2000)'' and '' Colossal Youth (2006).''

Plot

The film focus on the interactions among four characters: Clotilde and Tina are close friends and neighbors living in the depressed Fontainhas district. Clotilde is very protective of the suicidal Tina, who has a newborn baby with an unnamed deadbeat father. Eduarda is a nurse living in a better working-class area. She met the father and the baby by chance, and get to know Clotilde and Tina as a result. Their ambiguous relationship keeps this downbeat story moving around the shanty town. The director's ascetic style and this district's faded cityscape emphasize the depressing tone of the film.

Cast

* Vanda Duarte as Clotilde * Nuno Vaz as The father * Maria Lipkina as Tina * Isabel Ruth as Eduarda * Inês Medeiros as Whore * Miguel Sermão as Clotilde's husband * Berta Susana Teixeira as Nurse

Credits

* Director: Pedro Costa * Writer: Pedro Costa * Producer: Paolo Branco * Cinematography: Emmanuel Machuel * Costume design: Isabel Favila * Production design: Zé Branco * Sound: Henri Maikoff * Sound: Gérard Rousseau * Editing: Jackie Bastide

Home video

This film, together with

(2000) and Colossal Youth (2006), is released by the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

in a box set ''Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa''.

References

External links

* *
Podcast with Pedro Costa (on the "Letters from Fontainhas" Criterion DVD set, 2010), GreenCine Daily''Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas Trilogy: Rooms for the Living and the Dead''
an essay by Cyril Neyrat at the