Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival 13 awards including Best New Director Chicago InternationalFilm Festival, Gramado Critics Prize, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Special Jury, Rio Best Director, Best Actor, Sao Paulo Association of Film Critics Award

After performing a “miracle” on the day after his mother’s suicide “Santinho” gains spiritual ascendance over the inhabitants of his remote fishing community in Brazil.

Hailed as a savior and protector since then by the villagers, for 20 years his followers have prepared ‘The Dead Girls’ Feast’ in his honor. As the feast day approaches the young man revives his deep feelings of abandonment, his solace in the community’s reverence and the physical comfort provided his pedophilic father.

In these lands, the infinite human capacity of “fabricating” faith and seeking for some sense in the horrifying experience of death create a unique religious experience.

" wonderful film, disturbing, evoking a climate of excessive religiosity mixing themes of religiosity, taboo and incest with great intensity "

- Luiz Zannin O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper

in Portuguese

" The Dead Girls Feast’ will delight not only those who appreciate a good drama in its true sense, but those who consider arthouse cinema an appropriate space to create controversy about social and political themes "

- Marcello Castilho Avellar EM Cultura

in Portuguese

Director:
Matheus Nachtergaele
NOTES BY THE FILMMAKER Fear of death leads man not only towards tactics of pure survival, but also impels us to play out of some very elaborate behavior: grief, depression, melancholy, romantic desire, sexual compulsion, artistic expression, suicide.
In “The Dead Girl’s Feast” I tried to render the intimate portrait of a community deeply involved in a mystical cult. Every character in the village lives in his or her own particular state of mourning, each facing some sort of horror as they advance, day by day, toward the shared fate of all mankind.

Nachtergaele is one of the most important contemporary Brazilian actors had important roles as actor in “City of God” and “Central Station and “Four Days in September,’ and has been presented with the Best Actor Premio BR de Cinema.