A Sublime Life, a Strasburg Film Festival foreign feature, is all about happiness.
Dr. Ivan, the films main character, has found two radical cures for unhappiness: the diagnosis of fake terminal cancers and the temporary elimination of some of the 5 senses.
But will the therapies result or do they have unforeseea
ble side effects?
This film will be shown during November’s 1st Strasburg Film Festival, which shall occur the 9th through the 11th. It is scheduled to be featured at the Shenandoah Museum of Contemporary Art on Sunday, November 11th at 1 PM. Only 35 tickets will be made available for this special screening, which includes Lux et Tenebrae and Loose End. You can purchase day or three-day passes. Individual tickets can be bought on the event page.
Director Biography – LUIS DIOGO
Luís Diogo was born in Guiné-Bissau on the 26th of July 1972. At the time Guiné-Bissau was still a Portuguese colony.
With 2 years old he and his parents moved to Castelo Branco, Portugal, where he studied and graduated, as a High-school teacher, in 1994. He teaches arts since then.
In 1994/1995 he attended the first year at the ESAP – Oporto Cine-Video Superior School.
In 2000 he sold is first original feature film screenplay named “A BOMBA”. The movie opened in Portugal in January 2002 and became the second most seen Portuguese film that year.
In 2009 he debuted as a director with the short film I WILL NEVER. In 2011 he wrote and directed the short films COLD NIGHT IN CASTELO BRANCO and FREEZING NIGHT IN CASTELO BRANCO. These three short films were selected for several film festivals worldwide.
In 2012 he wrote, produced and directed PECADO FATAL / FATAL SIN, a future film that won 11 awards at 36 film festivals in 20 countries.
He is also the author of the original screenplay from the Portuguese Feature Film GELO (2016), with IVANA BAQUERO (Pan’s Labyrinth).
Director Statement
When submitting his film, Mr. Diogo added the following statement about his film:
What is the meaning of life? How should one live life? Are there better ways to live life? To enjoy life? What is wasting life?
Often we hear intellectuals criticize people who watch “trash-tv” instead of reading books, for example. But do people who read enjoy more their lives than those who do not read?
Elites criticize sports fans for “showing so much enthusiasm only because of a game.” But is it really wrong to feel this enthusiasm?
And many criticize those who have a capitalist way of life, concerned only with thinking about money, success, career, image, and fame. But don’t these people have the right to be like this? Isn’t it possible to be happy living life like this? The pleasure that these people have for possessing a larger car, for example, isn’t bigger, for them, than the pleasure they would have used that money in any other way?
Does being unhappy mean you failed in life or is it just one way to live life?
Does the obligation to “enjoy life” actually not prevent people from… enjoying life?
Is it more correct to “live the moment” or “prevent the future”?
Is it more correct to be the cicada or the ant?
This film intends to raise some of these questions, but without giving answers, because the movie precisely addresses those easy questions that bombard us since childhood, either in fables like “The cicada and the Hunt” or other children’s tales, books, legends, plays, movies, and media.
