Utopia Film Festival

For its 8th edition, Utopia Festival is celebrating the many facets of the relationship between film and the written text. The festival will start with a two day conference at King’s College entitled “From Text to Screen and Back to Text. Film and Literature – The Portuguese Context”. This colloquium will host two days of presentations and debates. In addition, the festival will also feature Q&As with film directors João Botelho, Margarida Gil and Paulo Filipe Monteiro, and the screening of films by these important directors. For the first time, the festival will also partner with the Essay Film Festival in the organisation of a live poetry reading, by Margaret Jull Costa and Pedro Mexia, of selected works by writers Jorge de Sena and Sofia de Mello Breyner, followed by a screening of Rita Azevedo Gomes’s “Correspondences” and a Q&A with the director, chaired by Sight & Sound film critic Kieron Corless. Also a first in its 8 year history, the festival has taken up the challenge of hosting a screening for school children, giving London schools the opportunity to discover the work of filmmaker João Nicolau. The relationship between cinema and literature will take a turn with the showcasing of films by Fernando Vendrell and Edgar Pêra, the latter with an introduction by producer João Pinto Sousa. To further widen exposure to Portuguese spoken cinema, the festival will screen a film by João Botelho at FACT Liverpool and a film by Brazilian film director Helena Soldberg at the Embassy of Brazil in London.