Director Ricardo Costa Cinematography Victor Estevão | Music director António Macedo | |
Initial release 16 October 1980 (Portugal) People also search for Pitoes, a village of Barroso Screenplay Ricardo Costa, Ilda Ribeiro, Mauricio Cunha Cast Helena Isabel, Adelaide João, Rogério Paulo, Fátima Matos Cruz, Carlos José Fraga |
Verde por fora, vermelho por dentro (Green outside, red inside) is a 1979 Portuguese feature film directed and produced by Ricardo Costa.
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History
Verde por fora, vermelho por dentro, in the panorama of the Portuguese cinema of the late 1990s, was an exception as far as, contrary to the national production of this time, was produced with no state funds. It is the first fictional film directed by Ricardo Costa, who is mainly devoted to documentary film and docufiction. Although conceived as a linear narrative, it subverts this classification since it finishes at the story departure point, a burial scene. Together with this stratagem, unreal and subjective situations interfere in order to generate a metaphor of the social and political country’s situation, affected by the recent Carnation Revolution. Facing the neorealistic tendency of the Portuguese films of its time, it caricaturizes politics and social agents in a surrealistic mood. It was highly controversial.
Synopsis
"A middle-aged businessman, a neoliberal, returns to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution to realise the ambitious dream of a banana plantation and help reconstruct the national economy, weakened by the "communists". He fails. He even fails his death, from which he mysteriously escapes. To be continued ?"