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Young filmmaker from Porto awarded at the Cannes Film Festival

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João Gonzalez

The 75th Editions of the Cannes Film Festival is marked in the history of the Portuguese cinema with the conquest of the Jury Award ("Leitz Cine Discovery Prize"), of the Critic’s Week, for the best animated short film “Ice Merchants” by João Gonzalez. It was one of ten short films competing in one of the most important parallel competitive sections of the French festival, being the first Portuguese [animated] film to win in the entire history of the festival.

João Gonzalez was born in Porto, in 1996. He received a scholarship from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, finished his graduation at the Escola Superior de Media Artes e Design (ESMAD) of Politécnico do Porto, and completed his master’s degree at the Royal College of Art (United Kingdom). After his first two experiences in animation - “Nestor” and “The Voyager”-, produced in those institutions, "Ice Merchants", is his first professional work to be awarded, produced by Bruno Caetano for COLA – Coletivo Audiovisual and funding also from France and the UK, with the support of the Instituto do Cinema e Audiovisual (ICA).

“Something that has always fascinated me in animated film is the freedom it gives us to create something from scratch. Sets and surreal and bizarre realities that can be used as instrument of metaphor to talk about something that is common to us in our reality”, João Gonzalez recently confessed to Lusa agency.

“Ice Merchants” is about a man and his son, who jump from a parachute every day from their house, perched on a mountain, leaning on a cliff, to sell ice, which they produce and sell in the nearest village, at the bottom of the mountain.

“It is a film that tries to study human rituals, the small things of life, being an important basis in the relationship between human beings”, explained the Portuguese director.

The soundtrack, which began to be developed at an early stage of the animation, was composed, and performed by João Gonzalez, with the participation of a group of musicians from the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo (ESMAE) in Porto with the orchestration by Nuno Lobo.

Highlight, in the list of awardees of the 75th edition of Cannes Film Festival, for “Triangle of Sadness”, by Ruben Ostlund, which won the Palme d’Or, and "Close", by Lukas Dhont, and "Stars at Noon", by Claire Denis, that won the Grand Prix ex-aequo, the second most prestigious distinction in the French event.