‘Otsoga Diaries’ ★★★★
Address Maureen Fazandeiro and Miguel Gomes
interpreters Cristina Alfaiate, Carloto Cotta, Joao Nunes Monteiro
premiere June 3, 2022
As the title invites you to guess – read backwards, word “otsoga” becomes “August”-, the first movie half directed Maureen Fazandeiro and Miguel Gomes this is a chronological reversal exercise. Its first scenes put us in a Portuguese villa where three characters interact in the midst of summer glory, until the story is attacked by covid and unfolded as a documentary about the creation process of what seems like a fiction about a love triangle. as fiction or a fiction starring a documentary, or both; The distinctions between the story the film tells and the creative process are defined and at the same time blurred and the meaning of situations is constantly changed. and meanwhile ‘The Otsoga Diaries’ It deftly depicts the effects of the coronavirus on its own shots and the mood swings of those who participate in it.
After squandering epic ambitions ‘Taboo’ (2012) and triple ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ (2015)Here Gomes redeems his humble demeanor and playful tone. ‘That dear August month’ (2008) -Perhaps not by chance, his images turned from documentary to fiction – to justify not only the festive nature of artistic creation, but also the joy in the face of difficult times, thereby providing us with the most fun and balsamic of all films. about the pandemic has been made so far.