Miguel Gomes

Lisbon, Portugal, 1972

 

Director

Director, screenwriter and editor. He studied film at the Lisbon School for Theatre and Film (Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema). He wrote film reviews for Portuguese newspapers until 2000 and then started to direct short films. In 2004, he directed his first feature film, A Cara que Mereces, I which he announced the main elements of his future author style – combination of fantasy and well-known fairy-tales. After two short films he directed the well-received documentary drama Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto (2008), and his next film, the black and white Tabu (2012), attracted attention of both audiences and international critics. The film was shown at many film festivals, and won the Portuguese Golden Globe as best film and Gomes received the FIPRESCI award at the Berlin Film Festival. He proved himself as a respectable film author with the trilogy Arabian Nights: The Restless one / The Desolate One / The Enchanted One (As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 1, O Inquieto / O Desolado / O Encantado, 2015), based on the series of stories from the Thousand and One Night, which he moved to contemporary Portugal and added to them an open commentary on current social and political problems.

Filmography

The Tsugua Diaries / Diários de Otsoga (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes, 2021)


Films by this director

Arabian Nights: Volume 1 - The Restless One

(As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 1, O Inquiet, Portugal, 2015)

Directed by: Miguel Gomes
PHOTOGRAPHY: Mário Castanheira (segment "A História do Galo e do Fogo"), Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Synopsis:

Bees are dying because their honeycombs are under attack from hornets; workers are laid off because the creditors of a shipyard require to get paid. The director, looking straight into the camera, hints at the similarity between the two catastrophes, and then confesses not to know how to connect them, breaks down and runs away from his own set. He is not the only person unfit for the job. Firemen do not put out fires because they lack the equipment and men as well as enthusiasm. The only people...

color, digital, 125 min

Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate One

(As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 2, O Desolado, Portugal, 2015)

Directed by: Miguel Gomes
PHOTOGRAPHY: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Synopsis:

Episode one: Simao killed four women, among them his own daughter and wife. In spite of that, he became the hero of his street. The law is the enemy of Portuguese people, and thee enemy of their enemy is their friend. Episode two: in this burlesque representative of the law tries to determine the cause-and-effect chain that led to the crime, but finds that she is faced with an impossible task: in an unjust society nobody is just and everybody is at fault for something. However, there are not eno...

color, digital, 131 min

Arabian Nights: Volume 3 - The Enchanted One

(As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 3, O Encantado, Portugal, 2015)

Directed by: Miguel Gomes
PHOTOGRAPHY: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Synopsis:

Scheherazade is lonely, separated from people of whom she tells stories and she is starting to lack inspiration. In secrecy she meets with her father. Scheherazade’s last story takes her to the workers’ neighborhood in Lisbon. People who live there have birds who have stopped singing a nicely as they did before and they educate them further. The carnival ends and shows us reality that is more surreal from everything we have seen so far…    This trilogy is inspired wi...

color, digital, 125 min
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