“Mysteries of Lisbon” – Best Foreign Language Film
The film Mysteries of Lisbon, by Portuguese producer Paulo Branco and Chile-born director Raul Ruiz, was nominated for three Satellite Awards, including Best Foreign Film, by the International Press Academy (IPA).
Based on a novel by Portuguese 19th century writer Camilo Castelo Branco, Mysteries of Lisbon has won several international awards, namely the San Sebastián Film Festival’s Silver Shell for Best Director, the Louis Delluc Prize, in France, and the São Paulo International Film Festival’s Critics’ Award, in Brazil.
The film was produced with a Portuguese and French cast. The Portuguese cast incudes Adriano Luz, Ricardo Pereira, Afonso Pimentel and Maria João Bastos. The French cast includes Clotilde Hesmé, Lea Seydoux and Melvil Poupaud.
Mysteries of Lisbon is the crowning achievement of the late Chilean film director Raul Ruiz also distinguished posthumously last week with the 2011 Special Award by the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
“Mysteries of Lisbon” was premiered in the United States in August and was distributed nationwide by Music Box Films.
Ruiz’ credits include Time Regained, his critically acclaimed adaptation of Proust’s Remembrances of Things Past and Genealogies of a Crime, both starring Catherine Deneuve, and Three Lives and Only One Death starring Marcello Mastroianni.
IPA is an organization of American and foreign journalists based in the United States which recognizes achievements in the fields of cinema, television, radio and new media. Members include working freelance and staff writers, bloggers, broadcasters, and photographers from more than 20 different countries as well as the US and territories. Originally known as The Golden Satellite Awards, the name was changed to Satellite Awards in 2003.
Raul Ruiz’s masterful adaptation of the eponymous nineteenth-century Portuguese novel (by Camilo Castelo Branco) evokes the complex intertwined narratives of Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens. The core story centers on Joao, the bastard child of an ill-fated romance between two members of the aristocracy who are forbidden to marry, and his quest to discover the truth of his parentage. But this is just the start of an engrossing tale that follows a multitude of characters whose fates conjoin, separate and then rejoin again over three decades in Portugal, Spain, France and Italy.
