28/04/2008

Emerging Portuguese director Miguel Gomes will be present in Cannes' sidebar section Directors' Fortnight with My Sweet Month of August [+see also:
trailer
film profile], his second film after his critically praised feature debut The Face You Deserve (2004).

Produced by Luís Urbano (Producer on the Move 2007) for Lisbon-based company O Som e a Fúria, the film was shot in the summers of 2006 and 2007 in several villages in the Portuguese countryside.

A cross between documentary and fiction, the story, co-written by Gomes, Mariana Ricardo and Telmo Churro, follows a family of musicians on tour. Gomes' camera captures not only the relationships between the family members but also the local traditions repeated each August in the country’s villages and towns.

A former film critic, Gomes’ short films won awards at festivals such as Oberhausen, Vila do Conde, Belfort and CinemaTexas, while The Face You Deserve picked up a prize at the IndieLisboa Festival and was recently released in France to much praise from Cahiers du Cinéma.

The other Portuguese name in the Directors' Fortnight is Cannes regular Paulo Branco, who produced the sidebar's opening film Four Nights with Anna [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski for his Paris-based company Alfama Films (see news).