O Herói (The Hero)
Fri 31 Oct at 8.15pm
Zézé Gamboa | Angola 2004 | 1h37m | 35mm | Portuguese with English subtitles | 15
The Hero is the story of Angola, a nation torn apart by forty years of
uninterrupted war. It is also the story of a city, Luanda, like so
many in the developing world, trying to absorb the millions of people
displaced by civil strife and global economic change.
The central
character of the film, the hero of the title, is Vitório, who was
pressed into service at the age of fifteen, and is now, twenty years
later, desperately trying to rebuild his life and find love. Vitório
has a prosthetic leg replacing the one he lost after stepping on a
landmine just months before the end of the war. His struggle to piece
back together his life echoes the struggle of the country at
large.
The Hero won the grand prize of the World Dramatic Competition
at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.