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PATRICK

By Gonçalo WADDINGTON

AUGENSCHEIN FILMPRODUKTION - as PROD

Drama - Completed 2018

Mario was kidnapped in Portugal at the age of 8. Twelve years later, he shows up in prison in Paris. What has happened over the years? Who is this 20-year-old man and why does he call himself Patrick?

- Year of production
- 2018
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- PORTUGAL, GERMANY
- Languages
- PORTUGUESE, FRENCH
- Director(s)
- Gonçalo WADDINGTON
- Synopsis
- Patrick's (20) life is a never-ending trip. He lives with his older friend Thomas (35) in a luxury apartment in Paris, flitting from one party to the next alone at night, doing coke, dropping pills, having sex with girls who are much too young and distributing child pornography. Patrick organizes an extravagant party at Thomas' apartment, which the police storm late in the evening. Patrick is arrested and the police find countless videos of child pornography on his laptop.
  
  He denies all accusations. When the inspector, Bento Ribeiro (60), confronts him with a video in which he himself can be seen as an eight-year-old and then finally calls him by his real name - Mário - the truth comes out. Patrick/Mário was abducted in Portugal and brought to Brussels twelve years ago. He was released from captivity at the age of 18, but instead of returning to his family, he moved on to a new life in Paris.
  
  Bento Ribeiro was an investigator on his case at the time and convinces Mário to return to his family in Portugal as a condition of reducing the charges against him. But returning home is anything but easy. His mother Laura (50) has assumed her son has been dead for 12 years. Now she is aware of the accusations against him and doesn’t know how to deal with someone like "him". Surrounded by his family, he still remains a stranger. Only with his 22-year-old cousin Marta, can he tentatively begin to build up a personal relationship.
  
  When his Parisian friend Thomas suddenly appears in Portugal, his two personalities collide. Patrick from Paris on the one hand, with his life dominated by drugs and sex and Mário from rural Portugal on the other hand, amidst his broken family, a young man who is trying to find a connection.
  
  Patrick/Mário's scars are too deep to just go on, so he takes a stolen car and drives to Brussels, to the man who once kidnapped him...