The Idol

To launch the Galaxy S21 in Portugal and highlight its ‘video beyond cinema quality’ benefit, Samsung and local agency Uzina created a full feature film shot in its entirety with the new device. And to make sure audiences will not miss it, they tapped into the works of Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet, and legend who died tragically at the end of 47 about a hundred years ago.

Aside from his poetry —compared to the likes of Shakespeare, Kafka and Faulkner— he’s also been know as a philosopher, playwright, essayist, translator, astrologer, and even an advertising copywriter. Now also as script-writer.

When Pessoa died, he only left a private book collection and a trunk where over 25 thousand pieces of paper were found containing poems, texts, thoughts, jottings, random notes, which even today are still being studied, investigated, compiled and edited in posthumous unpublished works. It was in that trunk that a series of ‘Scripts for Films’ were found.

The story of the movie is based on one of these manuscripts: ’Note for a Thriller, or Film’’. The Idol is technically the first script from the poet to be produced and released as a feature film.

You can watch The Idol for free on Samsung’s website, in Portuguese with English subtitles.