Dir: Gabriel Mascaro | Cast: Denise Weinberg, Rodrigo Santoro, Miriam Socarrás, Adanilo, Rosa Malagueta, Clarissa Pinheiro | Portugal, Sci-fi drama 82′ 2025
Stories about courageous women refusing to budge are a bit of a theme at this year’s Cairo International Film Festival. First there is Calle Malaga about an ageing Spanish woman determined to stay in her Tangier home. Then, in his fourth outing Gabriel Mascaro makes use of surreal but lowkey sci-fi in The Blue Trail (O Último Azul), a feisty but light-hearted fable about another woman who’s not for turning. Rather like the determined spirit played by Sonia Braga in Kleber Mondonca Filho’s Aquarius, Mascaro’s 77 year-old character Tereza also refuses to move on, despite her years.
The Blue Trail’s focus is on age discrimination in a near future world where the young often hold sway in their parents’ future. With their mobile ‘phones and social media they are backed by a government that insist that the more mature should move off to remote housing estates in a series of ‘wrinkle wagons’. All in the name of economic productivity.
Instead Tereza (Weinberg) sets off on a liberating, life-changing odyssey into the Amazon Forest where she sets her heart on learning to fly, with the help of a riverboat captain who transports her along the world’s most enigmatic river where they will encounter a fantastical fortune-telling blue snail.
Dreamlike yet grounded in a sense of timely reality, Mascaro’s satire is funny, moving and beautiful to behold with its gorgeous colours and camerwork and a melodious score. @MeredithTaylor
CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025 | OPENING FILM 2025