Direction: Ana Rocha de Sousa
Country: Portugal / UK
Portuguese actress-turned-director Ana Rocha de Sousa left her mark in Venice with Listen, a debut feature brandishing a realistic style à-la Ken Loach. This is the drama of a struggling Portuguese couple living in the suburbs of London, Bela (Lucia Moniz) and Jota (Ruben Garcia), who does everything to keep their three children at their side and impede forced adoptions to proceed after they have been unjustly targeted by the inflexible British social services.
The film grabs our attention in its first third but gradually steps into precarious paths that leads to repetitive family gatherings and a zealous court scene that expressly seeks for emotional intensity. The screenplay, co-authored by Rocha and producers Aaron Brookner and Paula Alvarez Vaccaro, battles for consistency with an approximate number of hits and misses. Aiming for higher narrative stakes, the film rushes a few scenes and fades away nearly as fast for an undistinguished conclusion.
