Miguel Moreira’s Portuguese idler travels to Cape Verde to find his dad in in this meandering, lusciously shot drama
There’s a charming, easy swing to this docu-fiction feature from documentary film-makers João Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis. It has a warmth and openness as it follows its nose across the landscape, building episodic encounters with nonprofessional local people into what could be called a quest narrative. Ruminating valuably on the nature of cultural belonging and exclusion, it’s amiably laid-back, though I have to confess I felt that a bit more storytelling structure and energy wouldn’t have gone amiss.
The musician Miguel Moreira plays Djon, essentially a version of himself – a Portuguese guy whose family hails from Cape Verde, the island state and former Portuguese colony 350 miles off the west coast of Africa.
There’s a charming, easy swing to this docu-fiction feature from documentary film-makers João Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis. It has a warmth and openness as it follows its nose across the landscape, building episodic encounters with nonprofessional local people into what could be called a quest narrative. Ruminating valuably on the nature of cultural belonging and exclusion, it’s amiably laid-back, though I have to confess I felt that a bit more storytelling structure and energy wouldn’t have gone amiss.
The musician Miguel Moreira plays Djon, essentially a version of himself – a Portuguese guy whose family hails from Cape Verde, the island state and former Portuguese colony 350 miles off the west coast of Africa.
- 8/15/2019
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Filipa Reis and João Miller Guerra's Djon África (2018), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing August 17 – September 16, 2018 as a Special Discovery.For most international observers, the Rotterdam Hivos Tiger Competition slot for Djon África was the first introduction to the Portuguese filmmaking duo of Filipa Reis and João Miller Guerra. Yet, over the past decade they have quietly built a rather impressive body of short and medium-length work that has been a constant presence in the Portuguese festival circuit, with wins at IndieLisboa and DocLisboa, and traveled to some international fests (like Cinéma du Réel or DokLeipzig). Reis and Guerra have also regularly supported directors such as Golden Bear winner Leonor Teles or The Nothing Factory’s Pedro Pinho (a regular collaborator who scripted the original treatment for Djon África). Most of their own work is documentary in nature or origin, dealing openly with...
- 8/12/2018
- MUBI
Project is directed by Joao Miller Guerra and Felipa Reis.
Source: Still Moving
‘Djon Africa’
Paris-based sales and production company Still Moving has boarded world sales on Portuguese directors Joao Miller Guerra and Felipa Reis’s Cape Verde-set identity quest drama Djon Africa ahead of its premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr) this week.
The feature is among eight films due to compete in Iffr’s 2018 Hivos Tiger Competition this year.
It stars Miguel Moreira as the titular Djon Africa, a good-natured, young, Portuguese Rastafarian who heads to the Cape Verde islands off the West Coast of Africa in search of his paternal roots and a father he never knew.
The trip does not go as planned and the young man finds himself caught up in a strange personal odyssey, oscillating between Cape Verde’s vibrant night-life and the solitude of its countryside, in which he probes his identity, where he belongs...
Source: Still Moving
‘Djon Africa’
Paris-based sales and production company Still Moving has boarded world sales on Portuguese directors Joao Miller Guerra and Felipa Reis’s Cape Verde-set identity quest drama Djon Africa ahead of its premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr) this week.
The feature is among eight films due to compete in Iffr’s 2018 Hivos Tiger Competition this year.
It stars Miguel Moreira as the titular Djon Africa, a good-natured, young, Portuguese Rastafarian who heads to the Cape Verde islands off the West Coast of Africa in search of his paternal roots and a father he never knew.
The trip does not go as planned and the young man finds himself caught up in a strange personal odyssey, oscillating between Cape Verde’s vibrant night-life and the solitude of its countryside, in which he probes his identity, where he belongs...
- 1/23/2018
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
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