Carmen movie storyline. It’s the early 1980s in a Maltese village. Middle-aged Carmen has spent her entire adult life in servitude and subservience to her brother, Francis, the village’s dour Catholic priest, and the church. She has quietly and secretly been holding onto a wartime memory to survive emotionally.
The townsfolk “see” her but pay her no attention in she literally being a non-entity. After Francis suddenly dies, Carmen is provided no support from the church in life after Francis, she basically kicked out of the rectory where she has lived that entire adult life with only her few possessions that fit into a small suitcase. The townsfolk are awaiting the arrival of the new priest, the brother of a young woman named Rita.
While she is in love with the bell ringer Tonio, Rita is destined to a life like Carmen in servitude to her brother and to the church. Not knowing what to do or where to go, Carmen finds some guidance literally from a pigeon as to that life post-Francis to the secret benefit to the village, although not always without incident to herself. That new life is both as a Christian and as a human woman with womanly feelings hearkening back to those wartime memories.
Carmen is a 2021 drama film written and directed by Valerie Buhagiar. Inspired in part by the real experiences of Buhagiar’s own aunt Rita, the film stars Natascha McElhone as Carmen, a Maltese spinster who has spent her adult life serving as a caretaker for her brother, who is a Roman Catholic priest, but who finds herself feeling free to explore her own desires and goals in life as she nears age 50. The cast also includes Steven Love, Michaela Farrugia, Peter Galea, Mikhail Basmadjian, Henry Zammit Cordina, and Richard Clarkin.
Shot in Malta in 2019,[2] the film was screened for distributors in the Industry Selects program at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, but was not made available to the general public.[3] It had its public premiere at the 2021 Whistler Film Festival,[4] where Diego Guijarro won the award for Best Cinematography in a Borsos Competition film.
In 2022, it was screened at the Canadian Film Festival in Toronto, where it won the award for Best Film. The film was released by Vortex Media in Canada in select theatres on August 19, 2022, and on video on demand on September 23, 2022. In Malta, it was released theatrically on September 21, 2022. In the United States, it was released theatrically in major cities and on video on demand on September 23, 2022, by Good Deed Entertainment.
Carmen (2022)
Directed by: Valerie Buhagiar
Starring: Natascha McElhone, Steven Love, Michela Farrugia, Peter Galea, Pauline Fenech, André Agius, Rachel Fabri, Mikhail Basmadjian, Paul Cilia, Henry Zammit Cordina, Paul Portelli
Screenplay by: Valerie Buhagiar
Production Design by: Sandra Smirle
Cinematography by: Diego Guijarro
Film Editing by: Matt Lyon, Peter Strauss
Costume Design by: Gina Bonello
Set Decoration by: Jasmin Azzopardi Schellmann
Art Direction by: Jon Banthorpe
Music by: Richard Feren
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Good Deed Entertainment
Release Date: August 19, 2022 (Canada)x September 21, 2022 (Malta), September 23, 2022 (United States)
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