In a statement, Beta Cinema reveals that “The Man Who Stole Portugal” is a production of the British company EMU Films, based on the book “The Man Who Stole Portugal” by Murray Teigh Bloom, already published in Portugal, with filming planned for Portugal, the United Kingdom, and South Africa.

“The Man Who Stole Portugal” is presented as a period heist film with dark humour, whose story moves from “the glamour and political turmoil of 1920s Lisbon to colonial Angola and the world of London printing houses.”

The cast

The cast is headed by British actor James Nelson Joyce as Artur Alves dos Reis (1896-1955), and also includes Richard E. Grant, Dominic West, Joel Fry, Herbert Nordrum, Kim Bodnia, and Nia Towle, among others.

The film “will give audiences the thrill of a great heist movie, but with a true story so scandalous it’s hard to believe it actually happened. It’s fun, stylish and fast-paced,” said producer Michael Elliott in a press release.

Who is Artur Alves dos Reis?

Artur Alves dos Reis became famous for committing various frauds, notably forging 500-escudo notes, contracts, checks, signatures, and diplomas, in order to amass a fortune.

He posed as an engineer in Angola, forged the signatures of Bank of Portugal administrators, and persuaded a British banknote printing house to print 200,000 500-escudo notes, which circulated illegally in Portugal and England. This money was used to found the Bank of Angola and Metropolis in 1925.

“Fraud, forgery, and embezzlement were three crimes that Alves Reis committed to amass a fortune,” states the biography available online from the Bank of Portugal, noting that the swindler was convicted in 1930 and released from prison in 1945.

“During the trial, he claimed that his objective was simply to develop Angola. He died on 9 July 1955, at the age of 58, penniless, at his home in Lisbon,” the Bank of Portugal states.

According to the film's executive producer, Terry Smith (of Moviedrome), Alves dos Reis was "a criminal mastermind who realised that forging a contract to print banknotes was infinitely easier than forging the banknotes themselves."

The story is also "a remarkable premonition: The shockwaves it caused in the Portuguese economy and the subsequent political collapse echo in the money issuance by central banks during the 2008/2009 financial crisis and during the Covid-19 pandemic," Terry Smith stated.

The project for this feature film will be presented at the "Film Market," which begins on the 12th and is one of the parallel events to the Cannes Film Festival.