The Tsugua Diaries
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
•
Independent, Drama
Three close friends, Crista, Carloto and João – along with an entire film crew – become the protagonists of a cinematic experiment during COVID-19 lockdown in Portugal. They spend their time in a spacious farmhouse where the long, sun-soaked summer days include dancing, chores, disturbed sleep patterns, flirtations, and building a backyard butterfly house.
Shot in sumptuous 16mm during the pandemic, the docu-fiction hybrid, which unfolds in reverse chronological order, continues a career-long fascination for director Miguel Gomes (Tabu, Arabian Nights) with the act of filmmaking. This time he teams up with his wife and creative partner, Maureen Fazendeiro, for a sun-soaked metatextual celebration of the creative process and a hazy meditation on lockdown blues.
Hailed as “perhaps the most relatable depiction and examination of life under COVID cinema's seen thus far” (The Film Stage), THE TSUGUA DIARIES had its world premiere at Cannes Directors' Fortnight and went on to win the awards for Best Director at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival and Best Actor (Carloto Cotta) at the Golden Globes, Portugal.
“A work that possesses both the whimsy and fearlessness of a student project and the technical vibrancy of a veteran’s opus.” –The New York Times (Critic's Pick)
DIRECTED BY MAUREEN FAZENDEIRO & MIGUEL GOMES
PORTUGAL, FRANCE | 2021 | PORTUGUESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Up Next in Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
-
Passion
When Kaho (Aoba Kawai) and Tomoya (Ryuta Okamoto) announce their engagement at a celebratory dinner with friends, they are unprepared for the emotional turmoil that is unleashed once a prior infidelity comes to light. Later that evening, Tomoya is invited to the apartment of his former classmate,...
-
Peppermint Candy
Yongho (Sul Kyung-gu) stares down an oncoming train as twenty years of his life flash before his eyes. Proceeding to move backward in time, Lee Chang-dong's acclaimed second directorial feature rewinds the protagonist's loss of humanity – from his fraught, self-hating middle age through his callo...
-
Oasis
Fresh out of prison, Hong Jong-du (Sul Kyung-gu) finds an unlikely soulmate in Gong-ju (Moon So-ri), the daughter of the victim of the hit-and-run accident for which he went to jail. Wheelchair-bound and suffering from severe cerebral palsy, Gong-ju is kept cloistered in a cheap apartment by her ...