A Guerra da Beatriz

East Timor’s First Feature Film

In 2013 Dili Film Works and FairTrade Films co-produced East Timor’s first feature film, A Guerra da Beatriz, a powerful love story spanning the years 1975 – 1999.

A Guerra Da Beatriz was written by Irim Tolentino, an award winning Timorese author, and Luigi Acquisto of FairTrade Films.  Dili Film Works founder, Bety Reis, co-directed the film. The producers were Stella Zammataro from FairTrade Films and Lurdes Pires from Dili Film Works.

A Guerra Da Beatriz is a love story inspired by a true 16th century French story about Bertrande de Rols and her husband Martin Guerre.  In this adaptation the story has been transposed to East Timor on the eve of the Indonesian invasion of the Portuguese colony.

The Story

The story starts in September 1975 with the wedding of Beatriz and Tomas in a small mountain village in the heart of Timor.  Several months later, following the Indonesian invasion of Timor, Beatriz and Tomas, along with hundreds of others from the village, flee to the mountains. They are captured in 1979 and resettled in the village of Kraras.

In 1983 Beatriz gives birth to a son. The child’s life` is threatened when Indonesian soldiers massacre every male in the village, over two hundred children and men, in retribution for an attack by the Timorese resistance.  Tomas, Beatriz’s husband, is arrested and disappears. Beatriz is unable to find Tomas’s body and desperately holds onto the hope that he has somehow escaped and will return.

Tomas returns sixteen years later, in 1999, following East Timor’s independence. He had fled to the mountains and fought with the resistance. It is a passionate and moving reunion. Beatriz discovers a different man to the boy who left her years earlier. Tomas is now wiser, gregarious and loving. He has learnt much from life and war.

But as time passes, Beatriz makes a chilling discovery. She becomes convinced that Tomas is an impostor, that she has mistaken a stranger for her husband.  Who is this man? Why has he taken on a new identity? Tomas’s sisters and family accuse Beatriz of treachery, of being mad. But she is determined to discover the truth.

A Guerra Da Beatriz is the haunting, passionate story of one woman’s conviction to remain true to the man she loves and the country for which she fought.