Our Beloved Month of August

Buy Tickets Now >

Sep 14, 2010

(Miguel Gomes, 2008, Portugal, 35mm, 150 min)

Director in attendance!

Ravishingly photographed and brilliantly assembled, Our Beloved Month of August is a travelogue to get lost in, an indigenous film created by tourists. It’s also a window into a fascinating filmmaking process that continues to unravel long after the credits roll.

Both documentary and fictional narrative, Gomes’s energetic and courageous film captures many vignettes of life in rural Portugal. The documentary portions deal with the filmmaker and his difficulties in getting the fictional film done, but the fictional parts seem very real at times, too. In the process of ignoring the distinct genres, Our Beloved Month of August reveals much about the village people and the difficulties of making films in remote areas.

“It recalls the hedonistic masterpieces of Jean Renoir” —Olivier Pere, Artistic Director, Locarno Film Festival

"A light, magical, euphoric work that joyfully mixes truth and fiction. Attention, non-identified object, with high poetic and popular contents. This delicate monster, that leaves the viewer happy, arrives from Portugal" —Le Monde

"It’s essentially a principle of pleasure, but most of all it's the affirmation of an aesthetic and ethic of play and joy, of the art of living and of making films, life and cinema together without confusing one another!" —Cahiers du Cinéma
 

Watch the trailer (unsubtitled):

<Back to Calendar