A moody masterpiece from acclaimed director Pedro Costa, Vitalina Varela (2019) stars the titular non-professional actor in a heartbreaking performance based on her own life. Vitalina plays a Cape Verdean woman who has travelled to Lisbon to reunite with her husband, after two decades of separation, only to arrive mere days after his funeral. Alone in a strange forbidding land, she perseveres and begins to establish a new life. Costa's latest film has received endless praise from the festival circuit, winning the Golden Leopard for Best Film and Best Actress at the Locarno Film Festival. With a tragic humanism evocative of a neorealist classic, Vitalina Varela has been described by TIFF as "a series of burnished, painterly still lifes, rendering the nightmarish reality of the African diaspora and the harrowing legacy of racial and colonial violence as a dreamlike portrait of the living dead."

Community Partner: Calgary International Film Festival