In “Our Father – The last days of Salazar”, José Filipe Costa reinterprets, based on real events, the last weeks of the life of António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), after suffering a fall and a cerebral hemorrhage, still convinced that he governed the country.
The film exposes “a story full of paradoxes and contradictions, a hallucinatory story”, fed by those who cared for the dictator, so that he would judge, in convalescence and until his death, that he still led the country, the director told the Lusa agency, in 2025, at the time of the world premiere in Rotterdam.
Actor Jorge Mota plays Salazar, bedridden and weakened in the São Bento Palace, in the care of the housekeeper Maria de Jesus (actress Catarina Avelar) and personal doctor Eduardo Coelho (actor Guilherme Filipe), who do everything they can to maintain a farce.
“They theatricalize his continuation as president! The film has a certain fictional freedom, but it is largely based on the notes from Salazar’s personal doctor, which I think would never have been published during the Estado Novo”, explained José Filipe Costa.
The director, author of “Prazer, Comrades!” (2019) and “Linha Vermelha” (2011), I also wanted to talk about “the fascism of small things, of power relations”, of what is said and what remains silent, and which still prevails today.
“The 25th of April was the possibility of giving power to citizens to decide on everyday things. Fascism is taking all power away from the citizen, placing it in a providential figure, in a figure who is above the people, who knows how to interpret the people better than they do themselves. […] I think there is a fascism, a Salazarism that prevails in institutions, in academia, in companies, in public offices, in the way we relate to others; it is a memory that is inscribed in us, that emotionally is still here”, he considered.
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