The Locarno Film Festival, at its 78th edition this year, is inviting audiences to explore The Seasons (As Estações).
The movie is the solo directorial feature debut from Maureen Fazendeiro (medium-length film Les Habitants, short Black Sun), a French filmmaker and casting director living in Lisbon who is known as a long-time collaborator of Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes, with whom she co-directed The Tsugua Diaries and co-wrote Grand Tour. The film will world premiere in the Swiss festival’s main competition lineup on Aug. 11.
The film is based on accounts and tales collected during its preparation and the personal
archives and fieldnotes of German archaeologists Georg and Vera Leisner, who studied megalithic sites in Iberia.
”Weaving together accounts of rural workers and field notes of a couple of archaeologists, amateur footage and scientific drawings, legends, poems, and songs, As Estações is a journey through the real history and the tales of a region in southern Portugal, Alentejo, and a portrait of the people who have lived there,” notes a synopsis on the festival website.
Fazendeiro herself, in a director’s statement, describes the movie as “an archaeological film,” explaining: “It excavates the landscape, the voices, and gestures of the people of Alentejo to uncover the vestiges of a shared history, one of wars and revolutions, fear and resistance, permanence and metamorphosis.”
‘The Seasons’
Courtesy of Marianne Andrea Borowiec
Written and directed by Fazendeiro, The Seasons features cinematography from Robin Fresson and Marta Simões. As cast members, Simão Ramalho, Cláudio da Silva, Ana Potra, Manuel Leitão, and António Sozinho are listed, along with voice cast members Gerti Drassl, Michaela Kaspar, Raphael von Bargen, Toni Slama, António Abel, and Simão Romeu.
International sales on the co-production between Portugal, France, Spain, and Austria, are being handled by Square Eyes.
THR can unveil a trailer for The Seasons, which features, among other things, archeologists, rocks, flowers, the moon, lots of goats, and such lines as “I heard a story” and “Once upon a time.”
Watch the full trailer below and decide for yourself if you want to hear a story.