VITALINA VARELA [Blu-ray]

A film of deeply concentrated beauty, acclaimed filmmaker Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela stars nonprofessional actor Vitalina Varela in an extraordinary 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. Winner of the Golden Leopard for Best Film and Best Actress at the Locarno Film Festival, as well as an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival, Vitalina Varela is a film of shadow and whisper, a profoundly moving and visually ravishing masterpiece.

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REVIEWS

On over two dozen Best Films of the Year lists, including Esquire, NPR, Rolling Stone, The Ringer, Los Angeles Times, Sight & Sound, Artform, Hyperallergic, and more!

The Best Film of the Year! "A haunting and profoundly haunted new movie from the Portuguese director Pedro Costa... Mysterious and quietly monumental... Unforgettable images... Dim the lights, cast your distractions aside and let Costa’s dark rooms merge with your own.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

"Spectral, ambitious, and singular, even for Costa.” – K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone

“Essential cinema. Socially conscious, but dreamlike, elegiac. Stunning pictorialism. In the opening shots of this film, one thinks of Goya and Velasquez; the clouds in the night sky evoke El Greco. Critic’s Pick.” – Glenn Kenny, The New York Times

"An aesthetically ravishing true tale." – Nick Schager, Esquire

"Startlingly original. Costa endows the tale with a pictorial majesty. Spectacular images, ideas, emotions, and performances… It’s a film that recovers the colossal symbolic power of classical American cinema." – Richard Brody, The New Yorker

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SPECIAL FEATURES

• Exclusive interview with Pedro Costa (41 minutes)
• Chantal + Pedro, a short film in which Chantal Akerman and Pedro Costa (or rather, their films) meet in a movie theatre, by Júlio Alves (2020, 8 minutes)
• Theatrical Trailer
• Booklet featuring an essay by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum