Ossos

Director: Pedro Costa, Pedro Costa, Pedro Costa, Pedro Costa, Pedro Costa

1998 / 98min / DCP

Costa’s passionate engagement with the Lisbon neighborhood of Fontainhas and its Cape Verdean residents began with his film, his last shot on celluloid, an austere semi-documentary work about three residents—two young parents unequipped to raise a child, and Vanda Duarte as the somewhat older woman observing their struggles—attempting to maintain a modicum of human dignity amidst desolate surroundings, captured with bleak beauty by cinematographer Emmanuel Machuel. “Filtered through the ambiguities of our time and executed with a mesmerizing delicacy.”—Lucy Sante

“Ossos was an important film for me because of its stillness. While the story is very different to Earth Mama, it forces viewers to sit with a young mother who is trying to figure out how she will parent this newborn. Few shots are used to tell the story, and the characters are framed in a way in which the foreground and background gives us insight into their emotional state. In its stillness, the framing gradually reveals the painful truths in often mundane actions.”—Savanah Leaf

Introduction from Savanah Leaf on Friday, March 29th