Arabian Nights: Volume 1 – The Restless One
Miguel Gomes
2015 | 125 min | Colour | DCP

"Gomes’ opening volume unfolds three unexpected tales about Portuguese life, labour and economic free fall that creatively blend fact and fantasy into vivid fables lurching between hilarious and tragic. A strange magic unites the stories, giving a dream logic and clarity to even their most improbable incidents: a talking rooster on trial for crowing too early in the morning, a mermaid released from an exploding whale, a group of impotent economists seeking a cure. Most touching in The Restless One are Gomes’ documentary encounters with unemployed Portuguese whose sober voices bring a heartrending humanity to his epic project." – Harvard Film Archive

Arabian Nights: Volume 2 – The Desolate One
Miguel Gomes
2015 | 131 min | Colour | DCP

"A dark whimsy weaves through the second and most spirited volume of Gomes’ trilogy, which opens with a rollicking and morally disorienting adventure: the escape of a serial killer who gradually becomes a folk hero by eluding the police. The subsequent stories tell of an absurd and seemingly unending trial over crimes that fantastically multiply and the ragged misadventures of a Maltese poodle whose lonely search for new owners in a bedraggled apartment complex gently recalls Umberto D’s neorealist canine." – Harvard Film Archive

Arabian Nights: Volume 3 – The Enchanted One
Miguel Gomes
2015 | 125 min | Colour | DCP

"Gomes closes his trilogy with a fascinating blend of delirious fantasy and melancholy poetic realism that travels from ancient Babylon to present-day Lisbon. The Enchanted One refers to Scheherazade, who opens the film by recounting the feverishly romantic tale of the many strangely talented suitors who vie for her affection. The majority of the film patiently follows a team of amateur bird trappers enamoured with their prey to which they teach new songs for a long-awaited competition. Like the fragile birds kept in cages, the lonely workers are capable of endearing magic but remain helplessly cut off from the rest of the world, emblems then of Gomes’ country’s vast potential and precarious state." – Harvard Film Archive

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Part of our Miguel Gomes season