ASTRAKAN 79
Catarina Mourão | Portugal 2023 | 64 Min. | Portuguese, Russian with English subtitles
TUESDAY, 21.05. | 5 pm
Kino De France, Saal 1 | TICKETS
together with SCÈNES MET MIJN VADER – SCENES WITH MY FATHER
Austrian premiere
58-year-old Martin remembers his one-and-a-half-year stay in the Soviet Union in 1979. His parents, Communist Party activists, thought that the then 15-year-old would end up in a society that conformed to their ideology. But in Astrakan, communist ideals of glory and splendor quickly began to crumble. Disillusioned, he dropped out of school, slept on park benches, and fell in and out of love. Forty years later, Martin shares his story with his son, a story that until now was taboo in the family.
Embedded in a politically charged environment, ASTRAKAN 79 is dedicated to the momentum between father and son on the threshold of adulthood and explores how values change in the course of a lifetime.
Director: Catarina Mourão
Camera: Paulo Menezes
Editing: Pedro Mateus Duarte
Audio: Armanda Carvalho, Hugo Leitão
Production: Leonor Noivo, Luísa Homem, João Matos, Pedro Pinho, Susana Nobre, Tiago Hespanha / Terratreme Filmes, Catarina Mourão, Catarina Alves Costa / Laranja Azul
SCREENINGS & AWARDS
[2023] Visions du Réel – Festival International de Cinéma Nyon [Switzerland]
[2023] IndieLisboa – International Film Festival (Award for Best Director in a Portuguese Feature Film) [Portugal]
[2023] MDOC – Festival Internacional de Documentário de Melgaço (Jean Loup Passek Award for Best Portuguese Documentary) [Portugal]
[2023] MOIDF – Macao International Documentary Film Festival [Macao]
[2023] FIDBA International Documentary Film Festival Buenos Aires Argentina [Argentina]
[2023] MIDBO – Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá [Colombia]
[2023] DjarFogo International Film Festival [Cape Verde]
[2023] Festival CINEUROPA – Santiago de Compostela [Spain]
[2023] Porto/Post/Doc: Film & Media Festival [Portugal]
[2024] Aniversário Terratreme – Casa do Comum [Portugal]
[2024] DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival [Finland]
[2024] Panorama Internacional Coisa de Cinema [Brazil]
BIOGRAPHY
Catarina Mourão studied music, law and film (MA at Bristol University and PhD at Edinburgh University, FCT scholarship in both). Founder of AporDoc (Association for the Portuguese Documentary). She teaches Cinema and Documentary since 1998 in different Masters. In 2000 she creates Laranja Azul with Catarina Alves Costa, an independent film production company. It is in this context that she directs her films which have always been awarded and shown in international festivals. Her main areas of research are documentary, memory, dream, archive and autobiography. Her PhD film “A toca do Lobo” was released theatrically all over Portugal and premiered at The Rotterdam International Film Festival.
