Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #37. Miguel Gomes’ Selvajara

Published on January 17, 2023

Selvajara

With what feels like the start of a new decade with one too many overlapping projects, Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes finally laid the long-gestating Savagery to bed. Written by Gomes alongside The Tsugua Diaries co-director Maureen Fazendeiro, along with Telmo Churro and Mariana Ricardo, Selvajara is an adaptation of the Brazilian novel Rebellion in the Backlands by Euclides da Cunha. production companies include: O Som e a Fúria (Portugal), Shellac Sud (France), Bananeira Filmes (Brazil), Komplizen Film (Germany) and Piano (Mexico).

Gist: This is a chronicle of a bloody war that pitted the inhabitants of the hamlet of Canudos, led by their prophet, against the army of the young Brazilian Republic in 1897.

Release Date/Prediction: If this is not headed to the Palme d’Or comp or Directors’ Fortnight section, then Locarno could lasso the film.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).