Diamantino

Director: Daniel Schmidt, Gabriel Abrantes

2019 / 92min / DCP

Alone or in collaboration with one another or other like-minded collaborators, over the last several years directors Abrantes and Schmidt have created some of the most hysterically deranged short films out there, and their feature debut doesn’t disappoint in its heady blend of political satire and gender-bending sexual anarchy. Tabu’s Carloto Cotta gives the finest comic performance in recent memory as the dimwitted Portuguese soccer superstar of the title, a burlesqued version of Christiano Ronaldo, swept up in a complicated comic conundrum involving the refugee crisis, Secret Service skullduggery, mad science genetic modification, and a right-wing anti-EU conspiracy. Smart, sly, and sweet, and featuring the biggest stampede of fluffy puppies you’ve ever seen.

“Diamantino is zany, quirky, funny, bizarre, kitschy, magnificent. The aesthetics and poetry of this jewel guided me in the direction of Emilia Perez.” —Jacques Audiard