Edgar Pêra’s “Não Sou Nada” – The Nothingness Club” will be released in Portuguese cinemas on October 28, distributor Nitrato Filmes announced today.
Presented in January in competition at the Rotterdam Film Festival, “I Am Nothing – The Nothingness Club” is presented as a “cinénigme” about Fernando Pessoa and his literary work, multiplied by dozens of heteronyms.
The film, produced by Rodrigo Areias, of Bando à Parte, was shot in the summer of 2020, in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, with the cast and technical crew in near-confinement, in a warehouse at the former Fábrica do Rio Vizela, in Vila das Aves, in the municipality of Santo Tirso.
It was here that Edgar Pêra imagined Fernando Pessoa’s mind as the editorial room of a magazine, or as an office – the poet himself was an office worker – in which all his heteronyms work, simultaneously producing new texts, such as Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos and Barão de Teive.
“I Am Nothing – The Nothingness Club” is an idea by Edgar Pêra, with Luísa Costa Gomes as scriptwriter, but 90% of the actors’ text is written by Fernando Pessoa.
With Miguel Borges as Fernando Pessoa, the cast also includes Albano Jerónimo, Vítor Correia, Miguel Nunes, Paulo Pires, António Durães and Victoria Guerra.
Edgar Pêra, who presented a retrospective of his cinema at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2019, emphasized a greater personal connection in this film, as the work of Fernando Pessoa is very present for him.
“This is by far the project I’ve projected myself into the most, pardon the pleonasm, because there are questions that are fundamental. [Pessoa has the ability to touch a lot of people, because he encompassed so many points of view. Anyone who reads his letters to Ophelia, his fundamental question has to do with money, work and love,” the director explained at the Rotterdam premiere.
Portuguese cinema in competition at the Annecy Festival, which opens today