Deep in the mazework neighborhood of Reboleira, Lisbon, someone is hiding €180,000 ($200,000), and Portuguese-Swiss writer-director Basil Da Cunha allows the characters of “O Jacaré” to use any and all means to find it in his new feature film competing at Locarno.
Produced by Thera Production (Switzerland) and co-produced by Continue Walking (Portugal) and RTS Radio Télévision Suisse, “O Jacaré” wastes no time dropping its audience in the middle of a vibrant, interwoven community, using Cape Verdean music and an ensemble cast of locals to set the tension of the plot.
The film, which will compete in Locarno’s main International Competition, has been boarded by Barcelona-based Low Light Films ahead of its world premiere.
“From the moment we saw ‘O Jacaré,’ we knew it was a film we wanted to champion,” said Jainer Morales Mena, Low Light Films founder. “We’re incredibly proud to represent it internationally and to help bring it to audiences around the world.”
“O Jacaré” is Da Cunha’s final film set in Reboleira, as the district faces pending demolition, and he uses the feature to celebrate an era of life there. Much of the film is sun-soaked and colorful and filled with the rhythm and chaos of life in a cloistered, liminal community. Although structured around the search for the missing money, “O Jacaré” is interested in solving a mystery but all the more in observing the stylings of Reboleira itself, and it’s in this meditation on time and place that the film finds its heart.
