Colossal Youth
Colossal Youth • 2h 36m
Directed by Pedro Costa • 2006 • France, Portugal, Switzerland
Starring Ventura, Vanda Duarte, Paula Barrulas
Many of the lost souls of OSSOS and In VANDA’S ROOM return in the spectral landscape of COLOSSAL YOUTH, which brings to Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas films a new theatrical, tragic grandeur. This time, Costa focuses on Ventura, an elderly immigrant from Cape Verde living in a low-cost housing complex in Lisbon, who has been abandoned by his wife and spends his days visiting his neighbors, whom he considers his “children.” What results is a form of ghost story, a tale of derelict, dispossessed people living in the past and present at the same time, filmed by Costa with empathy and startling radiance.
Up Next in Colossal Youth
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All Blossoms Again
In this 2006 documentary, filmmaker Aurelien Gerbault observes director Pedro Costa during the filming of COLOSSAL YOUTH, as he goes to and from the Fontainhas, Lisbon, location, rehearses with the actors, and ruminates on the ongoing destruction of the area where his Fontainhas trilogy is set.
