How sexy are firemen allowed to get? It’s the not-too-distant future, and King Alfredo lies on his deathbed reminiscing about his days as a cadet in a steamy fire station, the site of wild dancing, make-out sessions and naked re-enactments of famous paintings. Together with Afonso, young Alfredo, white and descended from a noble bloodline, dives headlong into this vortex of desire, as the great calamities of climate change, including devastating forest fires, are suddenly rendered peripheral. Alas, even when WILL-O’-THE-WISP indulges in the occasional libidinous, satirical twist, it remains deeply aware of the social prerequisite for successful ecological struggle: planting a new crop atop the scorched terrain of gender, race and class. A tongue-in-cheek musical about the transformational power of love.

João Pedro Rodrigues is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker and artist based in Lisbon. He graduated from the Lisbon Film School in 1992. Along with a number of short films, he has written and directed five feature films, including his first, O FANTASMA, which premiered in Official Competition at Venice Film Festival. His films premiered and won prizes at the world’s foremost film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Locarno, Toronto and Berlin and are part of several film archive’s and museum’s permanent collections, namely the Portuguese Cinematheque, MoMA, Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge/USA and the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna.

Filmography (selection): 1997 PARABÉNS! (short film), 2000 O FANTASMA, 2012 A ÚLTIMA VEZ QUE VI MACAU, 2016 THE ORNITHOLOGIST, 2022 WILL-O’-THE-WISP