A surreal psychological thriller to get lost in, Não Sou Nada (“I Am Nothing”) draws viewers into the demonically kaleidoscopic world of Portuguese modernist poet Fernando Pessoa. It is the most ambitious film to date from Edgar Pêra, whose broad and striking filmography was celebrated in a career-spanning retrospective at IFFR 2019.
Não Sou Nada – The Nothingness Club: a lurid vision of Fernando Pessoa’s inner lives.
This atmospheric imagining of the many personalities that populated the mindscape of the renowned Portuguese poet is a woozy, unruly enigma.
Life is filled with paradoxes: nothingness can walk hand in hand with wholeness. This is one of the feelings that one may experience while reading the title of The Nothingness Club - Não sou nada [+], Edgar Pêra’s latest feature, taking part in the Big Screen Competition at IFFR. It’s a title that leads us straight to Álvaro de Campos, one of Fernando Pessoa’s many heteronyms, and his poem A Tabacaria. But this is just the first of many steps in a film that looks into Pessoa’s writings, draws inspiration from them and then moves on, into another dimension – a place to capture what Pessoa’s writings had and still have to offer, allowing us to dream with (or through) him.
Edgar Pera fans will recognise the Portuguese auteur’s baleful character sketches (O Barao from the IFFR 2019 retrospective) in this stylish psychological thriller that dives into the deranged world of one of the 20th century’s most significant figures, the Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), here played by Miguel Borges.
The Nothingness Club is possibly Pera’s most substantial and relatable film to date, a noirish mannered thriller that plunders the emotional vulnerabilities and vicissitudes of the creative psyche in exploring the many faces of Pessoa’s heteronyms, the three main being Ricardo Reis (Correia), Alvaro Campos (Jeronimo) and Alberto Caeiro (Nunes).
"Não Sou Nada - The Nothingness Club" é apresentado como um "cinenigma" em torno de Fernando Pessoa e da obra literária multiplicada por dezenas de heterónimos, que tem estreia marcada em competição no Festival de Cinema de Roterdão.
An outlandish, radical trip inside Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa's mind, gorgeously realised as a mysterious office of alter-egos and clacking typewriters.