Corte, by Afonso and Bernardo Rapazote, in the Cinéfondation competition at the Festival de Cannes [02/07/2020]

Corte, a short film made by young filmmakers Afonso and Bernardo Rapazote and produced by the Lisbon Theatre and Film School, was selected by Cinéfondation, the competitive section of the Festival de Cannes dedicated to school films from around the world and new voices from independent cinema.

It is the first time in two decades that Portugal is represented in the Cinéfondation and the first time in the history of the competition that an entirely Portuguese production is selected, after the selections of António Ferreira with the Portuguese-German short Respirar (Debaixo d'Água) and Simão Cayatte with the film A Viagem made as part of his studies in the USA.

The film proposes a different look at order and freedom, as well as its impossible reconciliation. For the twins Afonso and Bernardo Rapazote “history is always a guide to the future, more than a celebration of the past, the film is not about the 18th century, but rather about our perception of that time with awareness of the present. Based on this notion, it can be said that what the film shows is the end of a family: a cut in the waste of the nuclear family, in this case the royal family, which represents this nucleus par excellence ”.

What remains, from the imagery created in Corte, are the residues of “a world in which the father is absent and the figure of the mother is dead at the outset - what remains is the bond of two twin brothers guided by a servant who tries to fulfill both roles, and the idea of ​​a crown prince who uses the pretext of freedom to act on his own ”.

In Corte, we see a distortion of the rules and codes established by the whodunnit genre. “The fatal irony of the plot's progression is that a character commits a crime to preserve a family ideal and, in doing so, destroys the last family bond in that space. On the other hand, the one who promotes ideals of freedom ends up chained, as if that world blamed him for his moral transgression. For this very reason, perhaps it is a film that puts itself on the wrong side of the story ”, explain the directors.

Created in 1998, Cinéfondation is part of the Official Selection of the Festival and has a program of around 15 to 20 films, which reflect the dynamism and diversity of the young international cinematographic creation, from which names like Corneliu Porumboiu, Jessica Hausner, emerged. Antonio Campos, Emmanuelle Bercot, Asif Kadafia, Simão Cayatte among others.