Morrer Como Um Homem

Direction & Screenplay

João Pedro Rodrigues

fiction

Portugal, France

2009

Language: Portuguese, German, English

Subtitles: French

133 MIN

Festivals

Festival de Cannes - 2009

Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal - 2009

Toronto International Film Festival - 2009

New York Film Festival - 2009

Cinema of the Future Award - Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema - 2010

Once upon a time there was a war… In the darkness of the night, a young soldier goes AWOL. Tonia, a veteran trans in Lisbon’s drag shows, watches the world around her crumble. The competition from younger artists threatens her star status.
Under pressure from her young boyfriend Rosário to assume her female identity, the sex change operation that will transform her into a woman, Tonia struggles against her deeply-held religious convictions. If, on the one hand, she wants to be the woman that Rosário so desires, on the other, she knows that before God she can never be that woman. And her son, whom she abandoned when he was a child,. Now a deserter, comes looking for her. Tonia discovers that she’s ill. To get away from all her troubles she travels to the countryside with Rosário, on the excuse of visiting his brother. Rosário takes the road of his childhood but will never find the right way.
Lost, they find themselves in an enchanted forest, a magical world where they come across the enigmatic Maria Bakker and her friend Paula. And that meeting will turn their world on its head…

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João Pedro Rodrigues

Direction & Screenplay

João Pedro Rodrigues' international career started in the fifty fourth Venice Film Festival, in 1997, where his first film, the short film Happy Birthday!, was awarded a Jury Special Mention.
In 1997 and 1998 he directed This is my House and Journey to Expo, a two part documentary.
In 2000, he directed O Fantasma. His first feature film was considered a piece of rupture, being the first ever Portuguese film to portray homosexuality explicitly. Internationally, it integrated the Official Competition in the fifty-sixth Venice Film Festival, it was awarded Best Film in Entrevues, International Film Festival of Belfort and in the New Fest: New York's LGBT Film Festival.
In 2005, his second feature, Two Drifters, won multiple awards, amongst which a Special Mention “Cinémas de Recherche” in the thirty-seventh Cannes Film Festival Directors Fortnight.
In 2009, João Pedro directed Morrer Como Um Homem (To Die Like a Man), which had world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. The movie depicts the story of Tónia, a travesty and transsexual in his 50’s, that while facing death hesitates to go forth with his sex-changing surgery. In 2007, the project was selected by the Cinéfondation for the Cannes Film Festival’s Atelier, where China, China, his short-film co-directed by João Rui Guerra da Mata was presented.
In 2011, João Pedro Rodrigues co-directed with João Rui Guerra da Mata the documentary short-film Red Dawn, presented through various festivals across the globe.