A richer, more daring, more generous, and more compelling work is hard to imagine. Colossal Youth centres on Ventura, a Cape Verdean ex-labourer whose wife of thirty years decamps Lisbon for home and leaves Ventura wandering his new neighbourhood, Casal Boba, to visit his “children”—various lost souls who see him as a father figure. Among them is Vanda Duarte, familiar from Costa’s previous two films, now on methadone and ensconced in a new apartment with husband and baby. Achieving grandeur with minimal means, Costa turns Ventura’s encounters with the once or presently dispossessed into a humanist epic. Carved out of over three hundred hours of material shot digitally, Youth offers one lovely composition and heart-smiting moment after another. “If there were many good movies in Cannes this year, and perhaps even a couple of great ones, Colossal Youth is the only one I would venture to call heroic” (Scott Foundas, LA Weekly).

Rated 14A