Director's notes on "A Floresta das Almas Perdidas"
about references
- “I have always been a big fan of horror films such as Halloween, but Carpenter’s films aren’t really character-orientated. In this film, I wanted to do a sort of a cross between Carpenter’s and Linklater’s styles,” explained the young director, for whom “bad hipster films” were also an unexpected source of inspiration. (From the Cineuropa interview, March 2015)
about the locations
- The events of the film take place in a single day of August. Yet, production took place both in the summer and in the winter, in order to make the forest and its glacier lake seem even more haunted. Every scene that is set outside the forest was filmmed in august, there's sun and the heat is felt all around. But every scene inside the forest was shot in december and january, sometimes in extremely cold days. One of the crucial scenes, involving a gigantic glacier lake, was filmed below zero with frost around us.
- The natural locations used for the forest were from very distintc places: from the Caramulo area to select locations in Vila do Conde and in Zamora (Spain). None of them are actually very remote locations, just visually impressive. The most curious bit was that both were stage to tragic events, something we only found out during production. My conclusion is that every place on Earth is haunted.
about our previous films
- Our previous film was a coming of age short film called 'Video Store', a dreamy romantic love story set in the 90s. It has the same setup of two people walking and talking about life in the middle of a lot of pop references. I think that 'The Forest of the Lost Souls' is kind of a follow up to that film - if that short was the light, this is the absolute darkness.
about genre conventions
- One of the film's project consultants pointed out that 'The Forest of the Lost Souls' actually is the oposite of a coming of age film, and a slasher films. In 'coming of age' films, two characters talk about their lives, dreams and hopes. Here, our character talk about suicide, dying and giving up. In 'slasher movies', the villain is usually traditional and the victims are liberals or reckless libertarians. In the events of 'The Forest of the Lost Souls', the villain is the more modernist character and the victims are a traditional family.
the project
- "The Forest of the Lost Souls" was originally presented publicity at the 1st edition of the FEST Pitching Forum in Espinho (Portugal) in the summer of 2012.