The film “Great Yarmouth – Provisional Figures”, by Portuguese director Marco Martins, will be in competition at the San Sebastian Film Festival in September in Spain, the organization announced on Tuesday.
“Great Yarmouth – Professional Figures” is a long-term project by Marco Martins, created with the Portuguese community living in Great Yarmouth, on the east coast of England, and began as a play, premiered in 2018 at the Festival of Norfolk and Norwich. , in the United Kingdom, and months later in Portugal.
With the film, whose shooting was interrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Marco Martins set out to portray the political current and the personal and community dynamics between Portuguese and English and “constructs a narrative about the decline of this English seaside town,” says producer Uma Pedra no Sapato.
The film is a reflection on the consequences of successive economic crises and the changes they have caused in the wild liberalization of the world of work”, he underlined.
The title “Provisional Figures” refers to the official statistical designation of immigrantsin an indefinite or provisional situation, in the United Kingdom.
According to the producer, the action of the film takes place in 2019three months before the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and stars the actress Beatriz Batarda, in the role of a woman who, together with her English husband, “helps local factories to recruit Portuguese workers and install them in the decadent hotels of the Golden Mile”. .
In addition to Beatriz Batarda, the film features performances by Kris Hitchens, Nuno Lopes, Rita Cabaço, Romeu Runa, and several Great Yarmouth and Portuguese laborers, with whom Marco Martins worked throughout the creative process.
The script for “Great Yarmouth – Professional Figures” is by Marco Martins and the writer Ricardo Adolfo, and the photography is by João Ribeiro.
The production is by Uma Pedra no Sapato, in co-production with France and the United Kingdom.
Source: Observadora
