Four strangers, four decades apart, all begging for mercy from history's indifference.
On January 21, 1975, in a village in the north of Portugal, a child writes to his parents who are in Angola to tell them how sad Portugal is. On July 13, 2011, in Milan, an old man remembers his first love. On May 6, 2012, in Paris, a man tells his baby daughter that he will never be a real father. During a wedding ceremony on September 3, 1977 in Leipzig, the bride battles against a Wagner opera that she can’t get out of her head. But where and when have these four poor devils begun searching for redemption?
Direction
Gomes weaves four timelines into one mournful chord.
Editing
Opera sequences crash against austerity-era footage.
Sound
Wagner haunts every frame like a guilty conscience.
Director
Miguel Gomes
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Gomes made this during Portugal's 2011 bailout crisis, literally stitching together national shame and personal failure. The Wagner is from a 1977 Leipzig recording—East Germany, same year as the wedding.
Pedro Passos Coelho was Portugal's actual prime minister during the bailout. Gomes cast him as a child's voice without permission, because art is petty and beautiful.
PT
