Uma Rapariga da sua Idade

Portuguese hybrid between fiction and documentary, youth and adulthood, and a young couple's widely different views of a dark future. Mariana is a young woman in her 20s who has moved from her parents' home in the northern part of crisis-ridden Portugal to Lisbon, to live with her boyfriend Alex. But now he is on his way to New York to pursue his ambitions as an actor. The two of them differ quite dramatically in their approach to the country's crisis and bleak prospects when they meet again in her home town, where a local myth talks about how crossing the river of oblivion will allow you to put the past behind you. Mariana and Alex must make their own choices. Lisbon, which is gradually recognized as a new Berlin, and the desolate landscapes in the north of the country are the locations where an elegant encounter takes place between a real social reality, the couple's own experiences and a cinematic vision, which is not limited by documentary dogma. 'A Girl of Her Age' is Márcio Laranjeira's debut and in its own words a 'documentary novel', in which Laranjeira demonstrates a special sense of a place's atmosphere and character, and for the underlying social and political currents. —Mariana Sampaio