City of Pirates (1983)

Original title

La Ville des pirates

Directed by

Raúl Ruiz

Genre

drama film, fantasy film

Country

France, Portugal

Runtime

1h 51m

Rating

7.1 of 10 from 44 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young woman encounters strange characters and bizarre events on a remote island. The story follows her through a series of dreamlike episodes involving pirates, a boy, and a mysterious man.

dreamlikesurrealdisorientingdarkexperimentalunsettlingwhimsicalvisually inventive

What happens

City Of Pirates (French: La Ville Des Pirates) is a 1983 French experimental surrealist dark fantasy film directed by Raúl Ruiz. Made during Ruiz's most prolific period of filmmaking in exile and shortly after his first return to Chile since the 1973 military coup, the film stars a primarily French cast including Hugues Quester, Anne Alvaro and Melvil Poupaud. It was filmed in Portugal over a period of three weeks. Ruiz used a process of automatic writing to write his screenplay during the shoot. Academic Michael Goddard notes that "Ruiz would write the script each day immediately after the siesta; hence, in effect, dream the script rather than writing it." As a result, the film is heavily influenced by conceptions of dreams and their relationship to storytelling and the visual. The film is generally considered to be one of Ruiz's best works and exemplifies several recurring themes and motifs of the director's style, including neo-Baroque narrative and cinematography, depth of field, childhood, navigation, dreams, and schizophrenia. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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