EXCLUSIVE: Thomas Napper’s The Man Who Stole Portugal has just wrapped shooting in the UK, Portugal and South Africa.
James Nelson Joyce, whose credits include This City is Ours and A Thousand Blows, stars alongside Emily Fairn, Joel Fry, Herbert Nordrum, Kim Bodnia, Nia Towle, Richard E. Grant and Dominic West in the darkly comic period heist, which is being sold at AFM by Beta Cinema.
The film is based on the true story of Alves Reis, an ambitious young outsider determined to build a better life in the economic turmoil of 1920s Portugal who carries out a vast financial fraud that threatens to destabilise the country’s entire financial system.
Written by Richard Galazka and based on the book by Murray Teigh Bloom, The Man Who Stole Portugal is produced by Michael Elliott for the UK’s EMU Pictures. Executive producers include Walli Ullah and Jim Mooney for EMU Pictures and Terry Smith for Moviedrome. Napper’s credits include Jawbone and Widow Clicquot.
Above is a first look image from the film which captures the grand opening of Reis’ Bank of Angola and Metropole, the crowning achievement of a man who was struggling to find work just a few years earlier.
Celebrated as a financial visionary, Reis begins lending money to people the established banks have turned away, winning the admiration of a country desperate for change. But behind his extraordinary rise lies a fraud of unimaginable scale, and the growing question of just how far he can push his luck before it all comes crashing down.
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