Coroa de Espinhos

In a slightly altered representation of reality, the Lisbon neighbourhood of Fontainhas becomes caught up in a murky plot of real estate speculation. What was once a working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts is turning into a coveted investment asset, while its residents begin disappearing —or being erased—. Poisonings, conspiracies, and mysterious presences are the elements of a film that freely appropriates the codes of horror cinema and confronts us with a pre-apocalyptic scenario that is unsettling because of its proximity. By reinventing and re-working stylistic features of the genre and cinematic legacies, Francisco Moura Relvas plays with reality and its distortions to craft an ironic fable that brings back the full brutality of late-stage capitalism’s urban transformations. The intrusions of fiction allow us to see, by contrast, a violence so commonplace that it has become invisible. A terrifyingly real terror embodied by technicians and estate agents. An exorcism of the aggression of real estate capital — a desperate gesture of insubordination and resistance.

Margot Mecca