Screening of “De Bicicleta” brings cinema to the ALRAA amphitheater in an initiative promoting culture, community and the opening of public spaces to citizens

The amphitheater of the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region of the Azores (ALRAA) will become an open-air movie theater on Tuesday, August 25, with the screening of “De Bicicleta,” as part of the “Festa do Cinema ao Ar Livre” (Open-Air Cinema Celebration), an initiative organized by the Matriz Parish Council in partnership with the Faial Film Club.

The screening begins at 9:30 p.m. and is open to the general public, continuing a cultural program that has been taking cinema into public spaces in the Matriz parish since June. Beyond offering another evening of film, the initiative seeks to encourage greater use of community spaces, broaden access to cultural programming and nurture an appreciation for cinema.

The participation of the Azorean Parliament gives this particular screening an additional civic dimension. By making its amphitheater available for the event, the ALRAA joins a project that brings citizens into a space associated primarily with political and institutional life, demonstrating how public buildings can also become places of encounter, culture and community.

On the screen will be “De Bicicleta,” directed by Mathias Mlekuz, a film inspired by a deeply personal true story. Following the tragic death of the filmmaker’s son, Mathias and his longtime friend Philippe set out by bicycle from La Rochelle, on the French Atlantic coast, toward Istanbul. What begins as a physical journey across countries and landscapes gradually reveals itself as something far more intimate: a voyage through grief, friendship and memory.

At its heart is the human need to continue moving when life itself seems to have come to a halt. The bicycle becomes more than a means of transportation. Kilometer after kilometer, the journey creates a space in which sorrow can be carried, shared and perhaps transformed. Friendship becomes companionship in its deepest sense—the presence of another person when words alone are insufficient.

Acclaimed by critics and audiences, Mlekuz’s second film approaches loss without surrendering to despair. Instead, it explores resilience and the unexpected ways in which grief can coexist with humor, tenderness and even a rediscovered sense of freedom. The road from La Rochelle to Istanbul thus becomes both geographical and interior: a journey undertaken in memory of someone who is absent and, at the same time, a gradual return to life.

That combination of cinema, public space and human storytelling is particularly suited to the spirit of the Open-Air Cinema Celebration. Watching a film beneath the evening sky changes the relationship between spectator and screen. Cinema leaves the enclosed theater and enters the life of the community, transforming familiar places into temporary spaces of imagination and shared experience.

Since June, the initiative promoted by the Matriz Parish Council and the Faial Film Club has sought precisely that encounter, using different public spaces in the parish to make cinema more accessible and to encourage people to experience their community in new ways.

On August 25, the amphitheater of the Azorean Parliament will become one of those places.

For an evening, a space associated with debate, representation and democracy will also belong to cinema—to a story about two friends, two bicycles, a long road toward Istanbul and the difficult human art of carrying memory without allowing grief to end the journey.

And perhaps that is one of the quiet powers of cinema itself: to gather strangers before the same screen and remind them that even the most intimate journeys can contain something universally human.

Based on a Press Release from the Regional Assembly of the Azores. Picture also from the Regional Assembly.