Deep in the mazework neighborhood of Reboleira, Lisbon, someone is hiding €180,000 ($200,000), and Portuguese-Swiss writer-director Basil Da Cunha allows the characters of “O Jacaré” to use any and all means to find it in his new feature film competing at Locarno.
Produced by Thera Production (Switzerland) and co-produced by Continue Walking (Portugal) and RTS Radio Télévision Suisse, “O Jacaré” wastes no time dropping its audience in the middle of a vibrant, interwoven community, using Cape Verdean music and an ensemble cast of locals to set the tension of the plot.
The film, which will compete in Locarno’s main International Competition, has been boarded by Barcelona-based Low Light Films ahead of its world premiere.
“From the moment we saw ‘O Jacaré,’ we knew it was a film we wanted to champion,” said Jainer Morales Mena, Low Light Films founder. “We’re incredibly proud to represent it internationally and to help bring it to audiences around the world.”
“O Jacaré” is Da Cunha’s final film set in Reboleira, as the district faces pending demolition, and he uses the feature to celebrate an era of life there. Much of the film is sun-soaked and colorful and filled with the rhythm and chaos of life in a cloistered, liminal community. Although structured around the search for the missing money, “O Jacaré” is interested in solving a mystery but all the more in observing the stylings of Reboleira itself, and it’s in this meditation on time and place that the film finds its heart.
Ahead of the film’s premiere, Variety spoke with Da Cunha about returning to Locarno, as well as his bond to Reboleira.
How has your relationship with Reboleira evolved over the many years filming there, and how did that shape “O Jacaré?”
For more than 20 years, cinema has grown alongside the people of Reboleira. It gradually stopped being something I brought into the neighborhood and became part of the neighborhood itself. Entire families have appeared in my films across generations as actors, extras, crew members or simply witnesses. We raised children together, buried friends, celebrated weddings and watched streets disappear. “O Jacaré” comes from that shared history. It isn’t just a film about Reboleira; it’s a film made from within it. As the neighborhood slowly disappears through demolition, I felt an urgency to preserve its gestures, voices, humor, music and memories before they vanished. In many ways, the film is both a celebration and an act of remembrance.
What drew you to telling this story through such a large ensemble of characters rather than following a single protagonist?
I’ve never experienced Reboleira as a place of individual heroes. It’s a collective world where everyone’s story constantly overlaps with everyone else’s. I wanted the film to move like the neighborhood itself: unpredictable, noisy, full of encounters and digressions. Every character carries a different generation, a different dream, a different wound. But the ensemble structure also came from another desire: “O Jacaré” is the last dance of the body of work I’ve built in Reboleira over the past 15 years. I felt an urgency to bring everyone together before this world disappeared. Some of the streets no longer exist, children have become adults, and many people have moved away. I wanted to reunite, in a single film, all the generations of people I’ve worked with throughout that journey. The film becomes both a story and a reunion: a collective portrait of a community, but also of the cinematic family we’ve built together over the years.
Music plays a massive role in the spirit of the film. Can you talk about your process for approaching the music of the story?
Music isn’t something I add to the film afterwards; it’s part of the life I’m filming. Most of the songs come from Cape Verdean musicians who shaped the cultural identity of the community long before I arrived. They carry memory, exile, celebration and melancholy all at once. I wanted every piece of music to feel as if it naturally belonged to the space, whether it’s heard from a passing car, a bar, a party or inside someone’s home. Rather than illustrating emotion, the music creates the emotional landscape the characters already inhabit. I also wanted the film itself to move like the music. The rhythm of the editing, the energy of the scenes and even the humor are deeply influenced by Cape Verdean funk from the 1970s. For the first time, I wanted to fully embrace the pleasure of popular genre cinema, not as an ironic reference, but as a genuine way of telling the stories of people who are rarely allowed to become larger-than-life cinematic figures. Music became the heartbeat that holds all of that together.
What does it mean for “O Jacaré” to premiere in Locarno’s International Competition, especially given your long history with the festival?
Locarno has accompanied almost my entire journey as a filmmaker. My first short film screened there in 2009, and many important moments of my career have passed through the festival since then. “O Jacaré” is now the third feature film I’ve premiered in Locarno, which makes this selection especially meaningful. It’s a recognition not only of my work, but of everyone in Reboleira who trusted cinema enough to make it part of their lives. In many ways, it feels like bringing the neighborhood onto one of the world’s biggest stages.