Film Info
Noite escura

Film Information

Exhibition Title	Noite escura
Original Title	Noite escura
English Title	In the Darkness of the Night
Director	João Canijo
Country
Year	2003
Format	35 mm
Colour	Color
Duration	94'

Cast:

Intérpretes / Cast: Rita Blanco, Beatriz Batarda, Fernando Luís, Cleia Almeida, José Raposo

Production:

Dirección / Director: João Canijo
Guión / Scriptwriter: João Canijo, Pierre Hodgson,
Mayanna von Ledebur
Fotografía / Cinematography: Mário Castanheira
Edición / Editing: João Braz
Producción / Producer: Paulo Branco
Compañía Productora / Production Company: Madragoa Filmes, Gémini Films

dates & times ticket

tickets

Synopsis

After his French adventure in Get a life, Canijo returns to the heart of Portugal with In the Darkness of Night, which transports Euripides’ Ifigenia at Aulis to a night club that is close to being a brothel or a cabaret. The owner of the place –the owner’s husband, to be more precise– is indebted to a Russian mob group that ships young women from the East to Portugal and exports Portuguese women to Spain, and so is forced to give up his younger daughter to slavery and prostitution. Without giving pathetic lectures or making sociological denounces, Canijo is able to condense the energy from Greek tragedies into a thick atmosphere of ignorance and misery that seems to anesthetize this family against such brutality and horror. Restless characters resigned to a fate they believe inevitable (“I have no more tears to shed” says someone at a certain point) but also has a cathartic effect: the wild butchering in the end is a proof of that.