The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

To mark the centenary of the birth of José Saramago, Nobel laureate of literature in 1998, the Embassy of Portugal presents a cinematic adaptation of his novel, which pays homage to Fernando Pessoa, one of the most renowned writers of the Portuguese language, who established a gigantic parallel universe creating a series of heteronyms to survive his loneliness of genius.
A doctor called Ricardo Reis (one of the many heteronyms of Pessoa) arrives back in Lisbon on a British steamship, after spending 16 years of exile in Brazil. Two women, Lídia and Marcenda are his carnal and impossible passions. Set in 1936, a year of turbulence with Mussolini's fascism, Hitler's Nazism, the terrible Spanish civil war and Salazar's Estado Novo in Portugal. In these leaden times, Reis wanders around Lisbon, between reality and fantasy, and encounters Pessoa in a daydream-like scenario. The story is a blend of fantastic realism with historical fiction.

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