VARIAÇÕES - GUARDIAN ANGEL
Special Features: North American Premiere; Q&A with filmmaker João Maia on Dec. 9
Portuguese pop music icon António Variações gets his due in this long-awaited biopic, which charts the singer's unlikely rise to fame before his untimely death from HIV/AIDS in 1984. Raised in a small village in Amares, in the north of Portugal, Variações (Portuguese TV star Sérgio Praia) longed to escape from an early age. Moving to Lisbon, where he became a barber, the young would-be singer became a fixture in Lisbon's underground art and music scenes, becoming known for his unconventional, outrageous sense of style and his unique, pop-infused take on Portuguese folk and fado music. Similar to recent music biopics about queer music icons Freddie Mercury and Elton John, VARIAÇÕES is a poignant tribute to an artist with a singular, uncompromising vision, and like BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY and ROCKETMAN, it has become a box office sensation poised to inspire a whole new generation of fans. DIR/SCR João Maia; SCR Karen Sztajnberg; PROD Fernando Vendrell. Portugal, 2019, color, 109 min. In English, Portuguese and Dutch with English subtitles. NOT RATED
No AFI Member passes accepted.
Run Time: 109 Minutes
Opening Date: Monday, December 09, 2019
Genre: Biography - music
