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20 February 2026 — 08:00 pm

The World’s Room
Living the Land

A film by Huo Meng - M/12+
Guest Marta Pacheco Pinto Researcher in Translation History and Portuguese Orientalism · Curated by Candela Varas
Cinema · Thought

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In 1991, as China undergoes profound socioeconomic transformations that lead many to leave the rural world in search of work in the cities, Chuang, a 10-year-old third child, is forced to remain in the village, according to his family’s plans. Against the backdrop of modernisation, a family finds itself divided between the weight of tradition and the force of progress, in an intimate yet expansive saga that spans four generations, following the cycles of life through the changing seasons.

This time, the guest invited to share her perspective on the projected universe is Marta Pacheco Pinto, a researcher in Translation History and Portuguese Orientalism, who will lead the conversation with the audience.

Living the Land is part of EscolaNova’s cinema cycle, The World’s Room — a meeting place where cinema asserts itself as a tool for reflection and change, curated by Candela Varas.

Berlin Film Festival :: Best Director Award

know + The World's Room

/ Artistic and technical credits

/Genre Drama  /Nationality CN  /Year 2025  
/Subtitles Portuguese · English  
/Director, Screenplay and Editing Huo Meng  
/Cast Wang Shang, Zhang Chuwen, Zhang Yanrong and Zhang Caixia  
/Director of Photography Guo Daming  
/Prodution Zhang Fan, Xinran Li, Yi Liu, Miaomiao Zhao and Xi Zhu  
/Distribuition Leopardo Filmes  

EscolaNova, Bordeira - Aljezur
20 February 2026 (fri) — 08:00 pm
Running time
132 min
Age Rating
M/12+
Tickets
5€ Single

Ticket office
The World’s Room
Curated by Candela Varas


A dark room, a white wall, a few chairs and cushions on a wool rug, or the warm summer open air. Each month, a new film appears, always accompanied by a special person, carefully chosen.

We believe that a film, after being screened, can continue to expand in a dialogue between the audience and someone we invite to think together. This person’s role is to guide the audience through a conversation that goes beyond what the work has already brought us - someone capable of offering unexpected perspectives, suggesting new readings and challenging perceptions.

We ask whether a film can open itself to other worlds beyond its own, and we pursue the richness of oblique viewpoints - those that lead us along transversal paths of thinking and feeling.

NIn this second edition, The World’s Room deepens this proposal, recovering the enchantment of the seventh art through a sharp, poetic, political, social and psychological contemporary cinema, with a selection of films curated by Candela Varas, in dialogue with guests from different fields of knowledge. One film and one person. One spectacle of images that we watch and then intuit within ourselves.


About the film selection, by Candela Varas

The Breath

The poetic word is born from breath, from the airy matter that passes through the body before becoming voice, rhythm and meaning. A poem is, above all, an organisation of breath. If poetry is made of air, cinema also breathes - not only because it is made of sound and silence, but above all because it is an art of time, pulse and oscillation. To think cinema through breathing is to shift the gaze from the image as surface to the image as duration.

This cycle invites us to think of films as a respiratory grammar, with their rhythm and metre: between cuts, silences and long takes, each work proposes its own cadence, alternating moments of full breath and held breath. It is also to notice how bodies and their breathing are filmed, and how we, as an audience, end up breathing with the film, feeling its pulse and inhabiting its time.
Detailed programme

30 January 2026
The Last Blue
/Director Gabriel Mascaro  /Guest Anabela Roque
20 February 2026
Living the Land
/Director Huo Meng  /Guest Marta Pacheco Pinto
27 March 2026
Looking at the Sun (In die Sonne Schauen)
/Director Mascha Schilinski  /Guest Marco Fonseca Pereira
The next films will be announced soon.
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