Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues (“Will-O’-the-Wisp”) is developing his next feature, Afonso’s Smile, a coming-of-age story about a teenage boy who discovers his sexuality amid the upheaval of the Portuguese revolution.

The director will be presenting the film during the Venice Gap-Financing Market, which runs August 29 – 31.

Afonso’s Smile begins in the aftermath of Portugal’s April 1974 Revolution, as Afonso, age 16, returns from Macau to live with his artist mother in Lisbon, a city still caught in the throes of post-revolutionary fervor.

As the capital begins to awaken from decades of dictatorship, Afonso is experiencing his own emotional and sexual awakening.

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“Afonso’s Smile” revolves around that “idea of delay,” said the director, as well as the political reality for the LGBTQ community in country that was emerging from nearly half a century of dictatorship.

When it came to Portugal’s LGBTQ community, those rights were not achieved at the same time as freedom was conquered.”

An underground queer community flourished in Lisbon, despite persecution by the authorities, and it’s the story of that community, told from the perspective of a teenage protagonist who’s “discovering the world,” that drives Afonso’s Smile.

The director noted that “metamorphosis through desire” has shaped most of his films.  In “Afonso’s Smile,” he returns to the theme of transformation, showing how change is “a classical way of telling a story.”

“In my films, somehow that change is more radical. It’s more physical,” he said. “You go from reality into imagination into fantasy. Perhaps that’s what I’m interested to tackle: How can you go into imagination. I think cinema, because it’s so realistic, is the ideal tool to make this shift between what is real, but at the same time doesn’t look real.”

Source: Variety