Projecto Global

Set in the turbulent years after the Carnation Revolution, Ivo Ferreira shapes a political thriller driven by fractured ideals, personal entanglements and suspense. It is a sharp look at a revolutionary movement losing sight of its purpose and at the costs of holding on.

The 1970s were defined in several industrialised nations by terrorism, or armed resistance, depending on one’s point of view. The acronyms remain familiar: RAF, IRA, ETA. Portugal experienced its own years of lead later, from 1980 to 1987, when the Forças Populares 25 de Abril (FP-25), allegedly led by the inscrutable Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, a key figure in the 1974 Carnation Revolution, waged a campaign in defence of what they saw as the revolution’s threatened achievements. Their actions included bank robberies, targeted killings, and even the shelling of NATO vessels in Lisbon harbour.

Ivo Ferreira’s political thriller Projecto Global offers a fictionalised chronicle of these years, anchored in the stories of three FP-25 members – Rosa, Queiroz and Jaime – as well as their nemesis, Marlow, once Rosa’s lover. Through these intertwined lives, the film enters the charged, often contradictory world in which the group operated, and the forces intent on stopping them.

In the spirit of the political thrillers made in Italy, France and the United States during the 1970s and 1980s, Projecto Global shows how a film can combine political insight with genuine suspense and high-octane action.

– Vanja Kaludjercic