THE PORTUGUESE NUN

Year: 2009
UK: ICA Films
Cast: Leonor Baldaque, Francisco Mozos, Diogo Doria, Ana Moreira, Eugene Green, Adrien Michaux, Beatriz Batarda, Carloto Cotta, Camane Camane, Aldina Duarte, Jose Manuel Neto
Director: Eugene Green
Country: Portugal
Language: Portuguese (English subtitles)
UK: 127 mins
UK Release Date: 21 January 2011 (Limited Release - London, ICA)

Synopsis

From award-winning French director Eugene Green's THE PORTUGUESE NUN is his latest feature. His previous works include LE PONT DES ARTS (2004), LE MONDE VIVANT (2003) and TOUTES LES NUITS (2001).

Displaying Green's distinctive minimalist style, the film follows Julie de Hauranne (Leonor Baldaque), a young French actress whose mother is Portuguese, as she visits Lisbon for the first time. She is there to act in a film inspired by Guilleragues' Letters of a Portuguese Nun, an infamous 17th-century work, widely believed to be a work of epistolary fiction.

Julie becomes fascinated by a nun who prays each night at the Nossa Senhora do Monte Chapel on Graça Hill. During her stay, the young woman has a number of encounters that, at first, seem ephemeral and without consequence. But one night, after finally speaking with the nun, she glimpses her destiny and the meaning of her life.