This intriguing and promising film which Gonçalo Almeida – present for the first time at Vila do Conde – brings to Curtas is a dreamlike thriller (that includes “zombies”, although clearly far removed from the conventions of this genre) which is always contained and always on the threshold of madness, exploring the fears and traumas of a woman who is about to give birth. Passing from dream to dream – or rather, from nightmare to nightmare – we are immersed, sometimes unable to distinguish between reality and hallucination (a confusion enhanced by the fact that the main character deals with the subject of her dreams in her working life), in the troubled psyche of Sophie (Elisa Lasowski, as talented as she is magnetic, and not only because of her beauty) in what can only be a Freudian approach to the paranoias and repressions of the individual beneath their shell of apparent everyday normality, converging with an obsession with death, a particularly sinister and symbolic aspect at a time when Sophie is preparing to bring a new life into the world. With its magnificent photography and accompanying sound track, Almeida films soberly and, above all, with a remarkable sense of rhythm, letting the film convey the spectral atmosphere to the audience and taking advantage of the extraordinary performance by the main actress, who manages to fill the screen simply with her face (and a handful of words and gestures). If it were not for the fact that the film begins and ends in the same way, it could all be considered a huge nightmare– since motherhood is surely the ultimate nightmare for Sophie. (FN)