The film Portugal is sending to the Oscars was shot entirely inside Coimbra
'A Memória do Cheiro das Coisas', by António Ferreira, beat five other titles in a vote of Portuguese Film Academy members. It follows a colonial-war veteran who moves into a care home and refuses to be looked after by a Black Portuguese carer.
A Memória do Cheiro das Coisas, directed by António Ferreira, will represent Portugal in the Best International Feature category at the 99th Academy Awards, on 14 March 2027 in Los Angeles.
It is worth knowing what it is walking into. Portugal has entered this category every year since 1980, and we counted the run the academy and the category register keep between them: 42 entries across 46 years, not one of them nominated. No country has tried more times without a nomination. This is attempt 43.
What the film is
Arménio is approaching eighty when he is moved into a care home. He resents being treated like the other residents, and he will not be looked after by Hermínia, a Black Portuguese care assistant. She is where his prejudice lands, while at night he relives the war he fought in Africa. José Martins and Mina Andala carry the film, which was shot entirely in Coimbra.
Ferreira, born in 1970 and a Coimbra man himself, interviewed former combatants and psychologists before writing it. He told Lusa he wanted a film about growing old that also looked at what survived in Portuguese society decades after the fighting stopped: men whose heads were filled with something nobody afterwards bothered to empty.
José Martins won best actor at the Shanghai film festival for the role, and Ferreira shared the best screenplay prize in Tangier with Tiago Cravidão.
The five it beat
Academy members voted between 21 August and 10 September on a six-film shortlist. The others were 18 Buracos para o Paraíso by João Nuno Pinto, Maria Vitória by Mário Patrocínio, Primeira Pessoa do Plural by Sandro Aguilar, Projeto Global by Ivo M. Ferreira, and Terra Vil by Luís Campos.
Is there any reason for optimism?
The record is the record, though it is worth separating from a second one. Portugal has never been nominated in this category, but it has been nominated at the Oscars, once, for João Gonzalez’s animated short Ice Merchants in 2023. And Portuguese cinema abroad is having its busiest stretch in years, from Leonor Teles’s run at Venice to a home release slate that has been filling Portuguese screens this month.
There is a long way to go. In December the American academy publishes a shortlist of ten, and only then come the five nominees. Until then, a film made in Coimbra waits.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Persona Non Grata Pictures
