Arabian Nights vol. III – The Enchanted One
As 1001 Noites: O Encantado
DIRECTOR: Miguel Gomes COUNTRIES: Portugal, France, Germany, Switzerland YEAR: 2015 LANGUAGE(S): Portugese SUBTITLES: English RUNNING TIME: 125 min
SECTION: Previews at Cinecittà 2015
SYNOPSIS
In ARABIAN NIGHTS, the Portuguese director Miguel Gomes uses the structure of the famous ”One Thousand and One Nights“ legends as the framework for a moving chronicle of the economic crisis and its impact on the Portuguese. His tragic, funny and fantastic stories of daily life in Portugal document the development of the country over a 12-month period.
The film tells “stories about the poor and the rich, the powerful and the unknown, children and elderly people, people and animals” says Miguel Gomes. His fabulous analysis of society whose range of styles goes from the modern to the archaic, the poetic to the journalistic, is almost like a contemporary version of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s experimental TRILOGY OF LIFE.
The frequent return of the same actors in different roles and stories gives ARABIAN NIGHTS a baroque and theatrical dimension, that unites cinema and life, reality and artefact in a homogenous dynamic and lends the film a poetic elegance. This dizzying mix of genres is accompanied by the profound sounds of enchanting music.
ARABIAN NIGHTS is made of three parts, each of which has its own tone. It premiered at Cannes in 2015.
MIGUEL GOMES
Born in Lisbon in 1972, Miguel Gomes studied at the Lisbon Film and Theatre School and worked as a film critic for the Portuguese press between 1996 and 2000. He directed several short films, which were awarded in many different festivals all over the world. THE FACE YOU DESERVE (2004) was his first feature film. In 2008, he presented his film OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2012 he won the Alfred Bauer Award at Berlin Film Festival with TABU.
FILMOGRAPHY
Meanwhile (1999), Christmas Inventory (2000), Kalkitos (2002), 31 (2003), Pre Evolution Soccer’s One-Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League (2004), The Face you deserve (2004), Cántico das criaturas (2006), Carnaval: à procura de Paulo Moleiro (2008), Our Beloved Month of August (2008), Tabu – Eine Geschichte von Liebe und Schuld (2012), Redemption (2013), Arabian Nights (2015)
SCRIPT: Miguel Gomes, Mariana Ricardo, Telmo Churro PRODUCERS: Luis Urbano, Sandro Aguilar CAMERA: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom EDITORS: Telmo Churro, Pedro Marques, Miguel Gomes MUSIC: Mariana Ricardo CAST: Crista Alfaiate, Dinarte Branco, Carloto Cotta, Adriano Luz
PRODUCTION: Box Productions, O Som e a Fúria, Shellac Sud WORLD SALES: The Match Factory GmbH GERMAN DISTRIBUTOR: Real Fiction Film