After premiering at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, and its Spanish premiere at the prestigious FILMETS Badalona, ASH WEDNESDAY continued its festival tour this autumn with two significant stops.
The first was War on Screen in Châlons-en-Champagne—the festival where it all began. At WoS Fabrique, the festival’s lab for emerging filmmakers, the script for ASH WEDNESDAY received mentorship from Manele Labidi and was awarded its first production grant by the French region Grand Est. Screening the film at this festival felt like coming full circle, a gratifying return. Director João Pedro Prado, producer Vincent Edusei, cinematographer Kleber Nascimento, and production designer Claudia Valeria Barrantes Sotomayor attended the ceremony and participated in a Q&A with festival director Philippe Bachman.
In France, ASH WEDNESDAY was screened alongside its partner projects: An Orange from Jaffa by Palestinian director Mohammed Almughanni—who generously supported the German-Brazilian production with a €2,500 equipment grant from SeeYouRent—and Water Cooler War by French filmmaker Lisa Sallustio.
After France, the team headed to a festival of immense symbolic importance: the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival. ASH WEDNESDAY was screened in the Première Brasil section of Brazilian cinema under The State of Things, a segment dedicated to politically engaged films. João Pedro Prado and Kleber Nascimento traveled from France to join co-director Bárbara Santos, co-author Bia Krieger, costume designer Gabriel Carneiro, and actor João Eduardo Albertini. The national premiere featured two parallel sold-out screenings at Estação NET Gávea. The film was programmed alongside Rapacidade, an experimental mid-length documentary exploring the erasure of Rio's port center's connections to the slave trade.
