When Edward’s search for his birth family takes him and his girlfriend Ryley to a magnificent villa high in the mountains of northern Portugal, he is excited to meet his long-lost mum and twin brother. Finally, he’ll be able to find out who he is and where he comes from. But nothing is as it seems, and Edward soon discovers that he is bound to them by a monstrous secret. First foray into horror by one of the surest assets of Portuguese cinema.
After the visual delirium of “Diamantino” that won him the Critics’ Week prize at Cannes, Gabriel Abrantes surprises with a more classic horror film around the mystery of family origins, but also following the Portuguese canon of country vs. city. Carloto Cotta in a double performance, Alba Baptista and Anabela Moreira in very challenging roles.
Based on the eponymously titled novel, this is the powerful real-life story of Lale Sokolov, a Jewish prisoner who was tasked with tattooing ID numbers on prisoners' arms in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during World War Two.