Horse Money

Cavalo Dinheiro

DIRECTOR: Pedro Costa   COUNTRY: Portugal   YEAR: 2014   LANGUAGE(S): Portugese   SUBTITLES: English   RUNNING TIME: 104 min  

SECTION: International Competition 2015

SYNOPSIS

Ventura is in a psychiatric institution. In a breathtaking mixture of reality and hallucination, the comprehensible and the incomprehensible, fiction and documentary, light is shed upon Ventura’s past. A complex cinematic journey with artistic and beautiful images reminiscent of classic painting show Ventura as the prisoner of his own mind and that of Portuguese history.

HORSE MONEY is a mixture of fiction and documentary in which its protagonist recreates real and imagined episodes of his life. In the very beginning of the film, director Pedro Costa juxtaposes photos by Jacob Riis of late 19th century New York with images of Ventura, a poor immigrant who has lived in Portugal for decades. This opening scene demonstrates that Costa’s work examines a hidden underclass. Later, Ventura works his way through his place in Portuguese society. He is someone who was born on an island whose first inhabitants arrived via the Portuguese slave trade; he is a victim of constant poverty, whose situation has been exacerbated by Portugal’s financial crisis, and he is also an eyewitness of the Carnation Revolution. Costa weaves all these episodes into a dream-like, fragmented masterpiece.

PEDRO COSTA
Pedro Costa was born in Lisbon 1959 and is one of the most renowned filmmakers in Portugal. He studied History at the Lisbon University and Editing at Film School in Lisbon. Before he comple­ted his debut feature O SANGUE (1990) he directed a series of short films. IN VANDA’s ROOM earned him the France Culture Award at Cannes, while the short THE RABBIT HUNTERS, his contribution to the Jeonju Digital Project, won the Silver Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. His film CHANGE NOTHING was selected for the Director’s Fortnight at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. His latest film HORSE MONEY won the International Competition at Filmfest Munich in July 2015.

FILMOGRAPHY
Das Blut (1989), Où gît votre sourire enfoui? (2001), In Vandas Zimmer (2000), Jugend voran! (2006), The Rabbit Hunters (2007) Change Nothing (2009), Centro Histórico (2012), Horse Money (2014)

SCRIPT: Pedro Costa   PRODUCER: Abel Ribeiro Chaves   CAMERA: Leornardo Simões   EDITOR: João Dias   MUSIC: Os Tubarões

PRODUCTION: OPTEC – Sociedade Optica Tecnica   WORLD SALES: OPTEC – Sociedade Optica Tecnica   GERMAN DISTRIBUTOR: Grandfilm