Coen Brothers at the Opening of Fantasporto 2008
This year Fantasporto begins earlier. This 28th edition of the International Film Festival of Porto will also reach more people and more easily. Besides the increase of number of the theatres where the Fantas films will be screened (the Rivoli Theatre, the Sá da Bandeira Theatre and 10 cinemas Lusomundo across the country), the official opening is scheduled to the beginning of the festival - Monday, February 25th, 21.30 p.m. in the Grand Auditorium of the Rivoli Theatre. But before that, come to visit the “City of Cinema” right across the Rivoli and visit the exhibition of celebrated painter Agostinho Santos at the lobby of the Rivoli.
The opening screening is reserved for the film "No Country for Old Men" by Joel and Ethan Coen.
But before that, come visit the “City of Cinema” right across the Rivoli and the exhibition of celebrated painter Agostinho Santos at the lobby of the Rivoli.
On the opening night there will be also a multimedia show and street animation at the entrance of the Rivoli Theatre. The red carpet, light robots and street theatre help the glamour of the celebration.
After these preliminaries, time for welcoming speeches in the Grand Auditorium and the Tribute to Max von Sydow.
And for a great start, nothing better than one of the most awarded films of recent times - "No Country for Old Men" of the Coen brothers. The directors of "Blood Simple" and "Fargo" present a breathtaking thriller full of irony, based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, a Pulitzer prize winner. The cast is luxurious and includes Tommy Lee Jones ("The Fugitive" and "Men in Black"), Josh Brolin ("Planet Terror"), Javier Bardem ("Jumping High" and "Mar Adentro") and Woody Harrelson ("Assassinos Natos"), among others.
"No Country for Old Men" with the Portuguese title "Este país não é para velhos" has already won more than three dozen awards at international film festivals and takes us to the United States of America in the early 80ies. Not a very smart hunter, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), finds in the desert of Texas a truck full of drugs, surrounded by corpses. Besides that, Moss also finds two million dollars in cash on the back seat of the pick-up. When the hunter steals the money, he triggers a catastrophic chain of violence that not even the sheriff Bell, an old and disappointed man (Tommy Lee Jones), is able to contain. Moss will have to run from drug dealers who want the money back, but especially from a mysterious and intelligent murderer Anton Chigurh (the magnificent and here unrecognizable Javier Bardem), a man with no mercy and without any sense of humor.
The Coen brothers remain cold and sarcastic. "No Country for Old Men" reminds the masterpiece of this pair that Fantasporto showed to the country in 1986: "Blood Simple".
And after the inauguration on February 25th, it is the time for the great Fantas Marathon, this year with 357 different films screening in 527 sessions, scheduled for 8 different cities. The great film event of the year has a name – Fantasporto, Portugal’s biggest film festival
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