2024 film by Miguel Gomes

The imaginative gaze of filmmaker Miguel Gomesbrings to the screen a fundamental text of Brazilian literature, Rebellion in the Backlands, Euclides da Cunha’s account of the 1897 war between the nascent Republic’s army and the native inhabitants of Canudos. This epic movie on the end of the symbiosis between humans and nature has faced major obstacles due to the complex political situation in Brazil, with a protracted pre-production phase that involves historical reconstruction of the village and close collaboration with the descendants of the Canudos. At present the production has been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. by Daniela Persico

Miguel Gomes (Tabu) muses with characteristic humour and melancholia upon small-scale, perversely prescient moments of human fallibility in this witty and affecting found-footage film.

With no parents, tutors, nor any watch in sight, a girl and two boys spend some summer days. There’s an amateur rugby match, a party, a trip to the beach; and also a slight romantic tension, some three-way kissing and half-joke, half-serious fights. But there are almost no words: part of it is because these kids don’t know very well how to talk to each other, and also because Gomes’ talent doesn’t need them to make images out of the evanescence of the passing of clouds, or of youth, that time in which, as Doris Day sings, whatever will be, will be

The only one of these four shorts whose the title doesn’t have a direct relation with its theme (Do you remember "Kalkitos", the trademark of action transfers, back in the 80s? Well, there's none of them here) presents, with an artificial mise en scene, as if it were a deformed imitation of a silent film, a guy in his twenties who feels like he’s still a child, and wants to play with others of his own (supposed) age

In the heart of Portugal, amid the mountains, the month of August is abuzz with people and activity...

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!

Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells King Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. As in the book, these stories are tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events.

2021 film directed by Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes

Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.

In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.