European Premiere
Films to Die For 迷影永恒
Cinephilia Encounters: Amorous Exile and the Gaze
Year of Production 2025
Production Countries/Regions
Unitied Kingdom
Duration 89 mins
Genres Documentary Cinephilia
Dialogue Language(s)
English Portuguese German
Subtitle Language(s) English
Director(s) Lúcia Nagib FBA
Director’s Bio
Lúcia Nagib FBA is Professor of Film at the University of Reading and Honorary Professor of Film at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo.
She is an internationally recognised specialist in world cinema, cinematic realism and cinematic intermediality, which she has explored through a novel approach in many publications, including her single-authored books, Realist Cinema as World Cinema: Non-cinema, Intermedial Passages, Total Cinema (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism (Bloomsbury, 2011). Her edited books include The Moving Form of Film: Historicising the Medium Through Other Media (with Stefan Solomon, Oxford University Press, 2023), Towards an Intermedial History of Brazilian Cinema (with Luciana Araújo and Tiago de Luca, Edinburgh University Press, 2022), Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film (with Anne Jerslev, I.B. Tauris, 2013), Theorizing World Cinema (with Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah, I.B. Tauris, 2012) and Realism and the Audiovisual Media (with Cecília Mello, Palgrave, 2009). Before Films to Die For, she directed, with Samuel Paiva, the award-winning feature-length documentary film, Passages (UK, 2019).
Synopsis
Departing from cinephilia, the essayistic documentary Films to Die For explores how films emerge from other films, and why cinema becomes a matter of life and death for those who make it. Anchored in Wim Wenders’s The State of Things, the film traces intertextual links across European, Hollywood, and Brazilian cinema, reflecting on the presumed “death of cinema.” Interweaving the creative trajectories of Wim Wenders, Walter Salles, Laura Mulvey, and Paulo Branco, it follows cinematic lives shaped and, at times, ended by film itself. Combining canonical film excerpts, original footage shot in Portugal, and interviews with filmmakers, the film maps a constellation of cinema woven from passion, history, and fate.
Festivals & Awards
2025 49th São Paulo International Film Festival– World Premiere
Scriptwriter(s)
Lúcia Nagib
Producer(s)
Lúcia Nagib FBA
Executive Producer(s)
Key Casts
Wim Wenders, Paulo Branco, Walter Salles, Laura Mulvey
Curators’ note
Departing from cinephilia, the essayistic documentary Films to Die For unfolds a reflection of how films come into being through one another, and how cinema repeatedly becomes a matter of life and death for those who make it. Taking The State of Things by Wim Wenders as its point of departure, the film traces intertextual connections across European, Hollywood, and Brazilian cinema, revisiting ongoing reflections on the “death of cinema.”
Moving along the creative trajectories of Wim Wenders, Walter Salles, Laura Mulvey, and Paulo Branco, the film brings into view lives shaped by cinema—and, at certain moments, brought to an end by it. Through the coming together of archival film excerpts, footage shot in Portugal, and conversations with filmmakers, a cinematic constellation gradually emerges, formed by passion, history, and fate. (Crystal Xinjie Wang, edited by Xiyun Li)
Director’s Statement
Films to Die For belongs to the burgeoning “film on films” genre, reflecting the digital-era shift from traditional auteurs to “amorous cinephiles”—remixers and lovers of cinema determined to defy its proclaimed end. Centering on Wim Wenders’ metafilm The State of Things, it traces its production and cinephilic echoes to explore cinema’s interplay of love and death. Ultimately, the film aspires to gather disparate voices into a borderless “artistic commons,” where cinema’s vitality is collectively preserved. （Excerpt）
