Real history, fiction and AI blend together for a look at a former radical far-left underground armed organization in Portugal in the new film from auteur Edgar Pêra (Telepathic Letters, Manual of Evasion LX94), Asphalt Guerrilla (Guerrilha no Asfalto). The movie marks the Portuguese writer-director’s return to the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, where it will world premiere in the Out of Competition program during its 79th edition on Monday, Aug. 10.
The militant group that the film revisits is the FP-25, short for Forças Populares 25 de Abril, or Popular Forces 25th of April, which was active between 1980 and 1987. It carried out dozens of bombings, shootings and bank robberies. The film is based on the eponymous book by Manuel Ricardo de Sousa, a member who ended up being lynched by a mob in the aftermath of a bank robbery.
But there is also a meta level to the movie. “It’s also about trying to make a film that ought to be shot in a guerrilla mode, with no compromises with the system,” notes the Locarno website.
A synopsis teases the mind-bending quality of the movie by describing it as “a fictional film rooted in reality about a utopian time in Portuguese democracy.” And it continues: “Set in the early ’80s, it begins with a quiet student who becomes involved in a radical organization and ends up being shot and lynched by the mob in the aftermath of a bank robbery. Throughout the film, we witness the sometimes comical, sometimes tragic problems of these ‘asphalt guerrillas’ fighting against the system; at the same time, the director of the film quits the organization in order to fight to make films in a guerrilla mode.”
