BLOOD OF MY BLOOD

Márcia (Rita Blanco) is a cook and raises her children alone, in a flat on the outskirts of Lisbon that she shares with her sister Ivete (Anabela Moreira), a hairdresser. Her daughter Cláudia is training as a nurse and works a supermarket checkout, her son Joca (Rafael Morais) has slid into the drug trade. Within a week everything comes apart: Cláudia falls in love with an older, married man, and Márcia realises her family is in serious danger. At the same time Joca double-crosses his supplier, and it is Ivete who has to answer for him. “Blood of My Blood” (Sangue do Meu Sangue) by João Canijo, Portugal 2011.

Canijo tells the story in 139 minutes and at a density in which everyone talks at once and the flat never lets its characters go; the closing scene, which piles violence of every kind on top of itself, was according to those involved the hardest of the shoot. The premiere took place in Toronto in 2011; in San Sebastián the film screened in the Official Selection and won an award, and further prizes followed in Palm Springs and Miami. In Portugal it was the year’s most commercially successful film and the country’s submission for the foreign-language Oscar. The film was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2012.

Shown at the 2012 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2012 · Film Archive