The first feature of Leonor Teles, ‘Terra Franca’, winner of around a dozen prizes, about the life of a fisherman and the connection of this one to the river Tagus and the family, has today commercial debut in Portugal.
After the short films ‘Rhoma Acans’ and ‘Balada de um batráquio’, Leonor Teles signs the first documentary, accompanying the life of Albertino Lobo, a fisherman from Vila Franca de Xira who has always been linked to the Tagus River.
The name of Leonor Teles excelled in Portuguese cinema in 2016, when he won the Golden Bear, the maximum prize of the Berlin festival, with ‘Balada de um batráquio’. At that time, ‘Terra Franca’ was already filming.
Filming lasted almost two years, between 2015 and 2017, to record a life cycle, with Albertino Lobo and Vila Franca de Xira as central engines of the documentary.
Leonor Teles, a native of Vila Franca de Xira, already knew Albertino Lobo and his family, but it was on a boat trip, conducted by him, that he realized that he had a movie to make.
“I felt that there was a force in that image and that Albertino, when he is in the boat, is in his element, and I think I felt that I had to capture it.” And everything else came later. he was on the boat, as if he were a cowboy without a horse, that distant figure without saying anything, “he told in October when the film premiered at the DocLisboa festival.
The film was first shown in March of last year in Paris at the Cinéma du Réel Festival, where it received the SCAM International Award.
On November 21, ‘Terra Franca’ premiered commercially in France in 11 theatres.
In the same month, the film was awarded the Best First Prize of the International Competition at the 33rd International Mar de Plata Film Festival in Argentina and the Amiens City Prize at the 38th International Film Festival Film, which takes place in this city 120 kilometres north of Paris.
The documentary by Leonor Teles also received, among others, a Special Mention at the FIDADOC – Agadir International Documentary Festival in Morocco, and the Special Mention at the Les Rencontres Cinematographiques de Cerbère-Portbou in the south of France.
