MOSQUITO
Portugal, France, Brazil, Mozambique, 2020 / 122 min / Portuguese OV with French or English subt. / drama, history, war
In 1917, a Portuguese soldier crosses a hallucinatory Mozambican savanna in order to find the front line.
Dreaming of great adventures and of standing up for his homeland, Zacarias, a seventeen-year-old Portuguese man, enlists in the army during World War I and is sent to the front line in Mozambique, Africa. His unit’s orders are to defend the Portuguese colony against a German invasion. But when he contracts malaria, he is forced to stay behind in camp while his platoon sets off for the province of Niassa. Hardly recovered and haunted by fever dreams, he leaves the field hospital on his own and sets out on a gruelling trek across the mystic Makua native land towards the front line, walking for over a thousand kilometres in search of his dreams and glory.
“Mosquito, told in non-chronological order, is a visually overwhelming war film without any war about a soldier without an army; the front is elsewhere – perhaps in Zacarias' head. Director João Nuno Pinto wrests from obscurity an overlooked episode from WWI. A story inspired by his own grandfather, who fought for the Portuguese in World War I.” International Film Festival Rotterdam
| Sun | 08/03 | 18:30 | Ciné Utopia | PT OV with FR subt. | Public | https://ticket.luxembourg-ticket.lu/luxfilmfest/webticket/shop?event=28992&kassi... |
| Thu | 12/03 | 21:15 | Cinémathèque | PT OV with EN subt. | Public | https://ticket.luxembourg-ticket.lu/luxfilmfest/webticket/shop?event=28854&kassi... |
| Fri | 13/03 | 18:30 | Ciné Utopia | PT OV with FR subt. | Public | https://ticket.luxembourg-ticket.lu/luxfilmfest/webticket/shop?event=28964&kassi... |
- Nominated, Big Screen Award, Rotterdam International Film Festival , 2020 (The Netherlands)
Born in 1969 in Mozambique, João Nuno Pinto is a Portuguese director. He moved to Portugal at the age of 5, shortly after the independence of the former Portuguese colony. João Nuno Pinto is currently based in Lisbon and São Paulo. After having established an international career in advertising, he premiered America, his first feature film, in 2010. The film – an ironic look at contemporary Portugal through the eyes of illegal immigrants – was screened and awarded at several film festivals as well as being critically acclaimed in Portugal, Spain and Brazil. Mosquito (2020), his latest film, is inspired by his grandfather’s life when he was a soldier stationed in Africa during World War I and took almost 7 years to prepare.
- 2020 – Mosquito
- 2010 – América
- 2008 – Skype Me (court-métrage / short / Kurzfilm)