Dir: Maureen Fazendeiro | Portugal, France, Spain, Austria – 2025 – 82’
‘Alentejo’ – the name conjures up crisp white wine enjoyed on a languorous summer’s day. But there’s more to discover about this bosky region of Portugal with its flinty terrain that borders the left bank of the river Tagus to the North and extends to the Algarve in the south – its name literally meaning ‘beyond the Tagus’.
The Seasons is the first solo feature for Maureen Fazendeiro who made her name co-directing the award-winning title The Tsugua Diaries alongside Miguel Gomes.
The Portuguese filmmaker combines current and imagined narrative strands to create an enchanting portrait of the Alentejo opening in the farming heartlands where a beautiful herd of white goats is roaming, one giving birth, before they all frolic amongst ancient olive groves. Here a man is constructing a shelter from reeds as the locals have done for hundreds of years before him. These time-honoured rituals are what makes the region stand out in today’s increasingly machine-driven agriculture.
The area is also known for the dolmens and menhirs, a natural feature of the Evora district, and here Fazandeiro interweaves footage of a research project including notes and diagrams undertaken during the mid 1940s by archaeologists Georg and Vera Leisner anchoring the region in its Neolithic past and giving further context to the local ancestors who originally began domesticating animals and cultivating the land 7000 years ago (2000 year before Stonehenge).
All this combines with the engaging tales of folklore recounted by locals enjoying beer in a cafe. These exchanges are animated by sequences that drift into magic realism embellishing legends of an outlaw brought to life, a white clothed girl (who sings a ballad), the mournful ‘saias’ of the rural workers and the idiosyncratic clicking of a goatherd calling together his stock amongst the wild flowers and the cork oaks.
Graceful pacing and a welcome use of the ambient soundscape with an occasional folkloric score make this a delightful and enlightening ethnographic portrait of the Alentejo, the real and invented narrative strands flowing along seamlessly to illuminate an inventive feature debut competing in the main competition at Locarno 78. @MeredithTaylor
LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2025 | Concorso Internazionale | World Premiere