Fact Sheet / Sleepwalking Land Page 1 of 4 Sleepwalking Land ...

Fact Sheet / Sleepwalking LandPage 1 of 4Directed by Teresa PrataPortuguese, with subtitles in EnglishMozambique, 2007, 97 minutesSTORYSleepwalking Land(Terra Sonâmbula)Logline:In war-torn Mozambique, a young boy searches the desolate countryside for his family with theaid of an affectionate yet hard-hearted elderly guide.Synopsis:In the midst of Mozambique’s devastating civil war, Muidinga, an orphaned refugee, wanders thecountryside in search of his mother. His only companion is an elderly storyteller, and the onlyguide to finding his mother is a dead man’s diary. Together, the storyteller and diary lead him ona magical, and sometimes macabre, journey across war-torn landscapes to find the family he lost.Based on Mia Coutou’s acclaimed Portuguese novel of the same name, Teresa Prata’stransporting drama underscores the power of imagination in surviving, and ultimatelyovercoming, the catastrophe of war.CASTMuidingaTuahirKindzuFaridaNick Lauro TeresaAladino JasseHélio FumoIlda GonzalezCREDITSDirectorWriterProducersCinematographerEditorSoundMusicTeresa PrataTeresa PrataPandora Da Cunha TellesAntónio Da Cunha TellesCamilo de SousaDominique GentilPaulo RebeloCarlos Alberto LopesAlex GoretzkiDistributed by The Global Film Initiative145 Ninth Street Suite 105 gfi-info@globalfilm.orgSan Francisco CA 94103www.globalfilm.org

Fact Sheet / Sleepwalking LandPage 2 of 4ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: TERESA PRATATeresa Prata was born in Portugal and spent her childhood in Mozambique. She studied biologyat the University of Coimbra and holds a degree in Screenwriting and Directing from the GermanFilm and Television School. She began her career working at an art gallery and has made severalexperimental videos and installations. Sleepwalking Land is her fist feature film.DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT“Sleepwalking Land is a film based on two different stories by Mia Couto, a Mozambican poetand writer. Two parallel stories, the Muidinga e Tuahir's journey and the Kinzu's search, bothdescribe the same universe, the search of a dream where the peace is personified by the sea.“The stories seem at the beginning separated but slowly mingle together, becoming part of eachother. The bridge between these two stories is a diary. This diary is MAGIC, it moves at the samerhythm than the music inside its readers. Every time they stop reading it, they find themselves ina different landscape. And like this, helped by the magic of the diary, they travel troughMozambique and arrive to the sea. A journey through feelings, shown in these differentlandscapes that slowly each one will discover, not immediately but slowly as they enter theAfrican rhythm, because each person has a piece of magic roots deep inside, and one never knowshow long the magic will take to wake up.“As Mia Couto says, Sleepwalking Land is a story about a land that falls asleep to the sound ofthe gun shoots, a story inside the story in which the narrative appears as to redemption of thesuffering from the war. Is it possible surviving a civil war without going insane? Everyone movesin state of delirium and WHAT THEY SEE is NOT WHAT THE SPECTATOR SEES. They seea surreal reality because they want it beautiful. What we see is what they refuse see. If the wordSupra-Realism existed, it would be the one I would choose to use. A story of fairytales describedin a realistic way, because a war is always hard and postpones everyone dreams. After this, youtell me are the characters dreaming or is the world going crazy and Sleepwalking?”ABOUT THE FILM: SLEEPWALKING LANDREVIEWS“Filmmaker Teresa Prata creates an affecting portrait of life during wartime. Ms. Prata, a skilledstoryteller with a clear, unsentimental eye, neatly balances large-scale horror with a small-scalepoint of view charged with simple, direct feeling.” –Nathan Lee, The New York Times“The unquantifiable toll of Mozambique's long civil war suffuses Sleepwalking Land, anemotionally affecting tale-within-a-tale helmed and scripted by Brazilian-born Teresa Prata.Originating with the wanderings of a young boy and an older man before spinning into a story145 Ninth Street Suite 105 gfi-info@globalfilm.orgSan Francisco CA 94103www.globalfilm.org