Synopsis

In July 2006, Director Miguel Gomes was having a minor catastrophe. Shooting of his second film, scheduled for the following month, had to be postponed indefinitely. Production funds were short for a demanding screenplay, due to be shot in Portugal’s interior during the August fiestas, and the director’s casting choices. Quickly getting over that shock, the director decided to set off for the location anyway, with a 16mm camera and a crew of five, and film everything he deemed worthy of recording, committing himself to rejigging the fiction accordingly. August is a vaguely idle time in Arganil, a poor and sparsely populated region known as “the heart of Portugal” amid the mountains where a few stray tourists come to have a good time while the locals return from their urban exiles. Emigrants return home, set off fireworks, fight fires, sing karaoke, hurl themselves from bridges, hunt wild boar, drink beer, make babies. The director and the crew took the time to wait for the slow budding of a fantastic dimension of everyday life. This organic construction is the way in which Miguel Gomes embarked on this second feature film of his. While a slightly sardonic love threesome – a father, his daughter and her cousin – made the initial plot, these characters lacked bodies. Gomes chose to look for embodiments on the spot. He filmed the landscapes for so long in his quest for actors that he found other stories in the meantime – minute legends meshing together and gradually taking on the weight of plots in their own right. ​

감독

• 
  • 미구엘 고메스
  • 1972년 리스본에서 태어났으며 리스본영화연극학교를 졸업했다. 졸업 후 영화평론가로 활동했으며 그가 만든 단편영화들은 오버하우젠, 빌라도콩드, 벨포르 등 세계의 여러 영화제에서 수상했으며 로카르노, 로테르담, 베니스, 부에노스아이레스 영화제 등에서 상영되었다. 2004년 <너에게 걸맞는 얼굴>로 장편 데뷔했으며 <내가 사랑한 8월>은 2008년 칸영화제 감독주간에 선정되었고 다수의 영화제에서 상영되었다.