''Vitalina Varela'' is a 2019 Portuguese drama directed by acclaimed director

Pedro Costa Pedro Costa (born 30 December 1958) is a Portuguese film director. He is best known for his sequence of films set in Lisbon, which focuses on the lives of the impoverished residents of a slum in the Fontainhas neighbourhood. Biography After com ...

. It won the

Golden Leopard The Golden Leopard () is the top prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, an international film festival held annually in Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. Directors in the process of getting an international reputation are allowed to be ...

and Best Actress Award at the 2019

Locarno Film Festival The Locarno Film Festival is an annual film festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, s ...

. The film follows

Vitalina Varela ''Vitalina Varela'' is a 2019 Portuguese drama directed by acclaimed director Pedro Costa. It won the Golden Leopard and Best Actress Award at the 2019 Locarno Film Festival. The film follows Vitalina Varela, a character who previously appeare ...

, a character who previously appeared in Pedro Costa's ''

Horse Money ''Horse Money'' (Portuguese: ''Cavalo Dinheiro'') is a 2014 Portuguese film directed by Pedro Costa. It premiered in August 2014 at the Locarno International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Direction. Horse Money is the fourth film ...

''. It was selected as the Portuguese entry for Best International Feature Film at the

93rd Academy Awards The 93rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released from January 1, 2020, to February 28, 2021, at Union Station in Los Angeles. The ceremony was held on April 25, 2021 ...

after Portugal's first entry, ''

Listen Listen may refer to: * The action of listening * Auditory system#Central auditory system, Central auditory system listening is how the brain processes what you hear * Listening behaviour types in human communication Computing * LISTEN, a Transm ...

'', was disqualified.

Synopsis

''Vitalina Varela'' follows its titular character, a Cape Verdean woman who arrives in

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 ...

to meet her husband who's been gone for 40 years. As soon as she lands in the capital, she learns that he died three days ago. We follow Vitalina through the shanty town of Fontainhas as she navigates the traces that her husband left behind, discovering his secrets and his illicit life.

Release

On August 14, 2019, the film had its world premiered at the Locarno Film Festival where it won the

and the Leopard for Best Actress. The film was then released around the world, through many film festivals. The film had its US premiere at the

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, it is ...

on October 6, 2019. On January 24, 2020, it was shown at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

. ''Vitalina Varela'' was theatrically released in the United States by Grasshopper Film on February 21, 2020, and on DVD and Blu-ray on September 8, 2020.

Reception

Critical response

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Rigorous and beautifully composed, ''Vitalina Varela'' is a quietly absorbing drama whose placid surface belies hidden depths."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which uses a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "Universal acclaim".

Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...

considered it the tenth best film of 2019, even saying: "Varela’s performance is elemental, forged in fire. It never ceases to astonish just what miracles Costa is able to wrest from non-actors, or more accurately, coach them to wrest from themselves, but this is probably the most formidable performance, and the most potent screen presence, as yet in his work."

References

External links