Ultimate Bliss

The community of Covas do Barroso, in northern Portugal, discovers that the British company Savannah Resources plans to build the largest open-pit lithium mine in Europe just few meters from their homes. Confronted by this imminent threat, the People decide to organize themselves and expel the company from their lands.

In 1918, Maria Adelaide Coelho da Cunha, heiress and owner of the Diário de Notícias, leaves the social, cultural and family luxury in which she lives to escape with a petty chauffeur, 26 years younger.

From a human point of view, a mountain is a barrier and a place of passage. Mountains have always been natural frontiers between territories. Nuno Escudeiro collected stories in Briançon, in the French High Alps, and in the Susa Valley, in the western part of Piedmont, and to these he added home movies from the Superottimisti Archivo di Film di Famiglia.

I haven’t seen my father for a decade. Together with my colleagues from cinema school, I return to the place where I was born, and a reunion seems inevitable.” Miguel de Jesus

Steeped in the isolation of suburban Tasmania, Imogen and Audrey reflect on their lives, families and dreams between puffs on bongs, vapes and cigs. Dark clouds approach in the conversation and landscape as local wildlife looks on indifferently. Beyond the drugs and arcades, what possible routes of escape remain?