Deborah Viegas

Deborah Viegas (b.1993) is a Brazilian filmmaker and artist. Her films are marked by laconic narratives that delve into everyday life to investigate the role of institutions and collective spaces in founding and perpetuating a political notion of normality – pointing to subtle and accidental forms of resistance and subversion. Her films have been screened and awarded at festivals around the world such as IFFR-International Film Festival Rotterdam, Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena de Indias and Festival do Rio. Viegas also frequently collaborates with other artists as an editor. These works were screened in festivals such as Berlinale, Locarno, TIFF and others.
YOUNG WOMAN SEEN FROM BEHIND is her first feature film project.

Young Woman Seen From Behind

LIM | Less is More 2022

Rita has just started working in a museum of Portuguese history, located in a 15th century Portuguese Palace. Her job is to watch over one of the exhibition rooms. She discovers she was hired to replace a former employee, a Brazilian boy named Antônio, fired for “suspicious behavior”, and who has since disappeared. One day, on opening the museum, she accidentally drops one of the collection works, a sculpture : “Head of a boy”. Seeing a small crack in the sculpture, Rita decides to hide the incident. From then on Rita’s daily life is haunted by the fear of being caught. The fear leads her to search for Antônio in a quest to unravel the mystery of his disappearance. In the museum, between souvenirs and forgetfulness, fear and mystery sew an elusive threat ; threat inviting us to reevaluate the heart of spaces, objects, and interactions. The memories of a colonial past seep into the nostalgic fabrications of the present and the anxiety for the future.