WORLD PREMIERE
SALOMÉ by André Antônio
Brazil, 2024,115′, color
FICValdivia, Feature Film Competition
October 14-20

Cecília, a successful young model, returns to Recife, her hometown, to spend Christmas with her mother. One night, a neighbour she hadn’t seen for a long time, João, shows her a bottle with a mysterious and intoxicating green substance. Cecília begins to fall in love with João, but also discovers he is involved in a secret cult around the figure of Salomé, the luxurious biblical princess.

“Looking back, I realize that I make films about characters who are searching for pleasure, trying to achieve particular ideals of paradise – whether it be the return to a childhood city and house in The Cult (2015), for example, or the smells and flavors of fetishistic sex in Venus in Nykes (2021). The project for my second feature, Salomé, came after The Cult was completed. I had read a lot from Oscar Wilde as research for that film, but after releasing it, I noticed that I still didn’t know the famous – and censored, at the time – play Salome, from 1891 I was fascinated from the first reading, mainly by the queer and erotic aspects of the text. Wilde’s movement was a return to the past, rescuing the biblical ambiance and the figure of Salome, a princess who was involved in the beheading of Saint John the Baptist (called by the Hebrew name Iokanaan). Wilde courageously and empathetically took the princess’s point of view. He showed her as a bored girl in the privileged comfort of her uncle Herod Antipas’ court. When she meets Iokanaan, the prophet imprisoned by Herod in a well, she begins to feel a fascinated and uncontrollable lust for him. She tries to kiss him, but the martyr refuses her harshly and irreducibly. She then asks her uncle, as a gift, for Iokanaan’s head on a luxurious silver platter – the only way she can finally kiss his mouth…”
(André Antônio)

André Antônio was born in Recife in 1988. He worked as a film editor for several movies from Pernambuco before founding, with filmmakers Chico Lacerda, Fábio Ramalho and Rodrigo Almeida, the independent queer film collective Surto & Deslumbramento. In 2015, his first feature, The Cult, premiered at Rio de Janeiro Int’l Film Festival and was exhibited in many international film festivals. After filming Venus in Nykes in 2021, part, among others, of the Berlin Critics’ Week, he has now directed his second feature, Salomé.

Screenplay André Antônio Editing Chico Lacerda Photography Linga Acácio Make Up Ana Simiema Music Mateus Alves, Piero Bianchi Sound Lucas Caminha, Nicolau Domingues Costumes Libra Lima Cast Aura do Nascimento, Fellipy Sizernando, Renata Carvalho, Zuba Neves, Clara Maria Matos, Danny Barbosa, Everaldo Pontes, Geyson Luiz Producers Dora Amorim, Júlia Machado, Thaís Vidal Production Ponte Produtoras, Surto & Deslumbramento Production Design Maíra Mesquita

Info:
https://mailchi.mp/theopenreel.com/salom-fic-valdivia-world-premiere