INVISÍVEL HERÓI

Portugal, France

Synopsis

Duarte, a blind man in his 50s, starts to look for his friend Leandro, a Cape Verdean immigrant who mysteriously disappeared. Despite his disability and Lisbon's summer heat, Duarte walks miles in his neighbourhood, but no one seems to even remember Leandro.That’s when he finds Leandro's picture of a woman in front of a disco. Maybe she’ll be able to help him.

Director's Statement

I first met with Duarte last spring when I was casting non-professional blind actors in Portugal for my first feature film (currently in development). I literally had a crush on him. We both felt the strong desire to experience cinema together. I invited him to Paris to shoot two scenes of my feature film for a program called emergence. It was the perfect opportunity for Duarte to perform in front of a camera for the first time and for us to get to know each other better. I then spent more time writing my feature. But my urge to shoot a film started to grow. That’s how the idea to write a film for Duarte came up. A documentary portrait built around his real taste for literature, his creativity, and starting from a situation he confessed to me. I indeed asked him why he spent so much time in the library. He answered that it was where his friends were. That he often spoke to them. I soon decided to use this witty confession as a starting point of my story. One of Duarte’s conditions to make this film was that it became a fiction: "Biographies are boring," he told me. That’s how the film navigates between reality and fiction, with a strong documentary background with Duarte’s real environment (the institute for blind people, its library that he is really managing, and his voice-over). Fiction comes slowly as we go out on the beach and to Lisbon at night (still with a documentary background).

Director's Biography

Cristèle Alves Meira has been a stage director since she’s 20 years old. She directed Jean Genet’s LES NÈGRES and SPLENDID'S, then Suzan-Lori Parks’ VÉNUS, at the prestigious Théâtre de l’Athénée Louis-Jouvet in Paris. She directed a documentary in Cape Verde, SOM & MORABEZA (52’), in which she reflected on the issues of immigration in the African Portuguese-speaking countries through the theme of music; and later through Angolan youth and its social realities, in BORN IN LUANDA (26’). Since 2008, Cristèle Alves Meira also runs stage workshops for primary, middle school class pupils and students under the leadership of the National Scene of Saint-Quentin en Yvelines. After SOL BRANCO (which won the Quality Award of the CNC 2015), Cristèle shot her second short film, CAMPO DE VIBORAS, again in the Tras-os-Montes area (located in the North-East part of Portugal) in January 2016, which got selected to the Cannes Critic’s Week. She is currently writing her first feature film, ALMA VIVA, developed at the famous FEMIS school in Paris.

FILMOGRAPHY:
2019 INVISIBLE HERO, short
2016 CAMPO DE VIBORAS, short
2014 SOL BRANCO, short
2013 BORN IN LUANDA, short
2010 SOM & MORABEZA, short
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Cristèle Alves Meira

Written by: Cristèle Alves Meira, Julien Barazer

Produced by: Gaëlle Mareschi, Pedro Borges

Cinematography: Julien Michel, Manuel Pinho Braga

Editing: Pierre Deschamps

Production Design: Joana Carneiro Reis

Original Score: Cristèle Alves Meira

Sound: Vincent Pateau, Pedro Melo, Simon Apostolou

Cast: Duarte Pina (Duarte), Lucilia Raimundo (Lucilia)

Nominations and Awards

  • Short Film Candidates 2020