Aniki-Bóbó (Great Restorations)

Show & Culture

A group of children loves to play on the banks of the river in Porto. One of them, shy Carlitos, falls in love with Terezinha and becomes jealous of his rival Eduardo, the leader of the gang. When Carlitos steals a doll to try to impress Terezinha, he is wrongly suspected of a more serious crime. This forces him to confront more grown-up concepts such as guilt, fear, and doing the right thing. “With a cast consisting almost entirely of children, the action seems to take place in a republic of childhood, in which a version of courtly love is played out on the streets by day, and on its rooftops at night. There's an archaic coyness about Aniki-Bóbó, but its mix of innocence and Vigo-esque mischief is still winning.” (Sight & Sound) “The first feature-length film of Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira (I’m Going Home) is a hard-edged, unsentimental look into the world of children that anticipated many of the techniques of Italian neorealism.” (Chicago Reader)