Finalmente Menino Júlio | Joana Cotrim

Theatre at Carpintarias
Approximate duration: 80 min
Supported by: CML, DGArtes and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation


FINALMENTE MENINO JÚLIO is a feature film started in 2021, that includes the actors' rehearsals for the play, which turns into a theatre show with presentations in September 2022, serving the purpose of finalizing the film, crossing the two artistic fields as a dialectic form of creation, where actors and directors meet on the same stage in the presence of the audience to shoot the remaining scenes of the film, being a co-creation of the actress and director Joana Cotrim and Marta Sousa Ribeiro.


The finalization of the film's shooting consists on the "invasion" of the camera in the theatrical space as a voyeur, generating different layers, dimensions and shots. We start from Strindberg's original play and the man/woman relationship, keeping the original intentions of the text, but modifying the gender of the characters. This is not transvestism or transformism, but a dialectical conversion that gives us a capacity for recognition through the other, using the verbal movement I (me) to the OTHER. If the individual exists only between the differential relationship with others, then why not think through new modes of exchange as a method of possible social change. The projection onto the other submits to being a form of enlightenment of the suffering and pain, and the thoughts of the other. Hence it brings up themes such as the desire for escape and change, the notion of submission to the other, the abuse of power, the conditioning of life circumstances and love as a resolution of expectations and ambitions.


This movement of exchange is neither born nor dead, it comes close to the true understanding of the other. Because there is a possibility that you leave yourself and you may never come back to that same self. Hence the risk of losing it. Losing the language, the identity to finally understand the other. This being the core issue of the project that can only exist performatively. The film serves as the place and space to give the answer, it is through the performative effect that we intend to reveal the understanding of this concept.


Formally, it is a fiction with a metalanguage about the theatrical and cinematographic making where the limits of fiction and reality, of the actor and the character, the limits of theatre and cinema and how each one can use the other to amplify and generate meanings are addressed. Throughout the filming, an awareness and the will to unfold fiction in several layers was generated, as an urgency to talk about what is beyond the drama. We decided to call this awareness "the death of fiction", as a second key concept that justifies the making of the film.


The reflection that we make in this project is about the will to reveal what is beyond the drama as a gesture of elucidation and loss of naivety. We try to know why fictionalised stories are losing interest in society in general, which is being dominated by reality shows. On the other hand, reality is no longer something we can hold on to when everything else collapses, and it is precisely in 2022, in the context of war, that we feel this. The concepts of reality and fiction mix and the only way out seems to be through acceptance. Interspersing Strindberg's fiction and the reflection on the potential death of fiction is the formal basis that underpins FINALMENTE MENINO JÚLIO.

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Technical sheet

Original idea, creation and text:
Joana Cotrim

Based on
“Menina Júlia” de August Strindberg

Co-creation
Marta Sousa Ribeiro Pedro Sousa Loureiro

Interpretation
Joana Cotrim
Pedro Sousa Loureiro Sérgio de Brito

Camera
Marta Sousa Ribeiro

Production
Sérgio de Brito

Lighting, sound and video operation
Marco Lopes

Direction (film)
Joana Cotrim
Marta Sousa Ribeiro

Screenplay (film)
Joana Cotrim

Interpretation (film)
Joana Cotrim
Marta Sousa Ribeiro Pedro Sousa Loureiro Sílvia Almeida
Tiago Raposinho

Photography (film)
Marta Sousa Ribeiro

Production Assistant (film)
Sílvia Almeida
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Sound Capture and Mixing (film)
Tiago Raposinho


Short biographies

Joana Cotrim did her MA in directing at the Royal Institute of Theatre, Cinema and Sound in Brussels with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation from 2015 to 2017. She graduated from Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, actors branch, in 2012. Bachelor's degree at ISPA in the area of clinical psychology. From 2011 to 2015 worked as an actress in the National Theatre D. Maria II, integrating the fixed artistic cast from 2012 to 2015. Founded in 2013, with Pedro Sousa Loureiro, OS PATO BRAVO, winning in the category of Theatre, the New Awards 2016 with the play Monumentos. They develop theatrical and site-specific projects, among them, Demóscar, Of Medeia and Monumentos, in co-creation, and My Beauty Tv Project, Prelude to Helena, Permanent Finit, The Revolution and Ticket to Heaven as creator and author, where she sought dissociation and anachronism between forms and contents. Recently she founded O Clube and has been working in partnership with Rita Morais and Ana Sampaio e Maia. Co-creator of Noite e Dia, project with international circulation in Antwerp and Brussels, A Família and As Três Irmãs Fufas. In the cinema she has worked with, Sérgio Graciano, Sérgio Henriques, Jacinto Lucas Pires, José Castro, Miguel Faria, Leonardo Mouramateus, Frederico Serpa, Paulo Prazeres and Marta Sousa Ribeiro. She has participated in several television productions for Plural and SP Televisão. She is currently on tour with MARIDOS, a play by the Mosca Theatre Company and simultaneously co-directing a feature film in development with Marta Sousa Ribeiro (PRAÇA FILMES 2022).

Marta Sousa Ribeiro was born in 1992 (Lisbon). In 2011 she interrupted the cinema course at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, later she joined the Drawing and Painting courses at Ar.Co, while directing her first short film. She studied at the European Film College in Denmark (2012 - 2013), where she directed her second short film. Marta was one of the co-founders of the film & video production company VIDEOLOTION, where she produced, together with director Pedro Cabeleira, the feature film SUMMER DANADO (VIDEOLOTION / OPTEC . 2017) - Special Mention Cineasti del Presente Locarno 2017. Further ahead she directed the 5th episode of the webseries SUBSOLO (VIDEOLOTION . 2018) for RTP - Carballo Interplay Best International Series Award 2020; and co-directed, with Joana Peralta, the 13th episode of the children's animation series CRIAS (VIDEOLOTION / PRAÇA FILMES / JPL FILMES . 2019) - Official Selection Annecy 2019. She was executive producer of several short films, features, video-installations, webseries, among others. She premiered her first feature film SIMON CALL (VIDEOLOTION . 2020) at the San Sebastian Film Festival, a project that received the Eurimages Lab Project Award (2018), Best Directing for Portuguese Feature Film at IndieLisboa 2021 and Open Call for Portuguese Women Filmmakers (2021), promoted by Netflix and Portuguese Film Academy.

Pedro Sousa Loureiro was born in Coimbra in 1989. He is currently attending the Master's programme in Theatre Directing at RITCS, with a scholarship for Arts Abroad from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He attended the Fine Arts course at ESAD (Caldas da Rainha) and has a degree in Theatre from ESTC. In theatre he has worked with: Maria João Rocha, Joris Lacoste, Lisbeth Gritter, Jorge Silva Melo, Ricardo Neves-Neves and Sofia Ângelo. Founded in 2013 with Joana Cotrim, OS PATO BRAVO with whom she co-creates OF OF MEDEIA (Primeiros Sintomas - 2014), MO NU MENTOS (Espaço Companhia Olga Roriz - 2015). For 6 months in 2016 he presents Palavra Com Lugar around Mário Cesariny, at Pensão Amor. Stages BEAUTIFUL HOUSE, from the universe of the artist Martha Rosler, with support for creation from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Liceu Camões Cellars - 2017). OS PATO BRAVO receive, in the Theatre Category, the New Awards 2016. He participates in the Nomadways artistic residencies in Bernay-en-Ponthieu (France 2016). In Brussels 2017 he participates in the show TICKET TO HEAVEN by Joana Cotrim, at KVS BOX. He creates IMPERATORE in 2018, also by him. Radio shows created for Antena 2: INTERSECTIONS (2016) SHOT OF FREEDOM (2020). In September 2019 he started the first phase of a documentary filmed in Armenia collaborating with Today Art Initiative. International Artistic Residencies: Nomadways - Bernay-en-Ponthieu (France,2016); Brussels -TICKET TO HEAVEN by Joana Cotrim, at KVS BOX. (Belgium 2017); Brussels & Ghent - EN LOLEETA by Axelle Verkempick (Belgium 2018); Today Art Initiative - Yerevan - Armenia (2019). In 2021 he created the show ONLINE DISTORTION / BORDER LINE(S) in co-production with Teatro Viriato.

Sérgio de Brito, born in Paredes in Porto, has a degree in Communication and Culture Sciences from Universidade Lusófona do Porto (2013), studied production at Centro de Estudos Jornalísticos de Lisboa CENJOR (2014) and worked as a journalist at Cofina group (2014). In 2016, he attended the theatre course - actors branch, at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. Among the projects in which he participated as an actor, the highlights are Eu não sou daqui, by the Brazilian director João Fábio Cabral (Teatro do Bairro, 2017), the performances Casa Coração (Teatro Ibérico, 2018) inserted in the Baile do Engate party by Sara Ribeiro. She participated in Atlas by Ana Borralho and João Galante (Teatro São Luíz, 2018), and A Paixão, by Romeo Castellucci (Centro Cultural de Belém, 2019). She recorded for RTP2 Dolls (2019) by Ivo Saraiva e Silva, a play for television and was part of the cast of Fora de Campo by the SillySeason company (Teatro Taborda, 2020). Recently he collaborated with Ana Sampaio e Maia in the show Revista cor-de-rosa (February 2022). In 2021 Sérgio de Brito was one of the winners of the Gulbenkian theatre applications with his project AGE OF AQUARIUS with a premiere date of May 12, 2022 at Rua das Gaivotas6 in Lisbon. Recently, he participated in the Creation Lab of the spanish artist and dramatist José Manuel Mora in the space of the company A TURMA in Oporto, he produced the show Revista cor-de-rosa and De Luto pela vida de Hugo Tourita. end of 2022.

Tiago Raposinho, born in Lisbon (1981), finished his studies in Cinema, Sound subject, in Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema - IPL, in 2004. He joined the work market in the area of animation dubbing in 2004, period in which he worked as a recording and mixing technician, serving also as an actor director and dubbing actor. He left after two years, in 2006. In 2007 he is hired by the production company Cinemate to perform functions in post-production of television content, fictional and otherwise, in a first phase, having later on also assumed functions of sound capture, namely in two feature films and several documentary series. He definitively ended his contract with this company at the beginning of 2012. In 2011 he is hired by Produções Fictícias to perform the functions of audio post-production in a weekly program of humorous content, having accumulated, individually, from 2012, the functions of audio post-production in all the programming of the producer's television channel, Canal Q, ending this collaboration in June 2016. Over the years that had elapsed after completing her studies in Cinema, her participation in film productions had been gradual, until, in mid-2016, she made the definitive leap into independence. The functions performed are both in the production phase (shooting) and in the post-production phase (sound editing and mixing).