His first film, Toutes les nuits, was released in theaters in 2001 and won the Prix Louis Delluc for first film. Le Monde vivant, presented in 2003 at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes Film Festival, was released in November this year together with the mini-film Le Nom du feu, screening for the first time in 2002 atLocarno Film Festival. In 2004 he made a third feature film, Le Pont des Arts, was presented at Locarno and was released the same year. In 2005 he directed a mini-film, Signes, presented in the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival and Filmmakers of the Present section at Locarno, 2006. Another mini-film, Correspondances, is part of a triptych, Memories (the other two being Harun Farocki and Pedro Costa), commissioned by the Jeonju Film Festival in Korea, and also presented at the Locarno Festival, 2007, where it won the Special Jury Award. In 2009 he directed his first film in Portugal, A Portuguesa Religiosa.
It is also a writer and has published essays, stories, and books of poems. His first novel, La Reconstruction, was published in 2008 by éditions Actes Sud. Two new books, a novel, La Bataille de Roncevaux (Gallimard), and “notes” on cinema, Poétique du Cinématographe (Actes Sud), will be published in October 2009.

I Grandi Festival… Da Locarno a Roma [Italy, 2009]
Frontiere – I film del Festival di Locarno a Milano [Italy, 2009]
53rd London Film Festival – Experimenta [UK, 2009]
33rd São Paulo International Film Festival – Perspectiva Internacional [Brasil, 2009]
Festival Internacional de Cine de Gijón – Rellumes Competition [Spain, 2009]
23rd CINEUROPA – Santiago de Compostela Film Festival [Spain, 2009]
Rotterdam Film Festival [Netherlands, 2010] – Spectrum Section
Mons International Love Film Festival [Belgium, 2010]

Hong Kong International Film Festival [Hong Kong, March 2010]
Festival Internacional de Cine de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria [Spain, March 2010]
Festival Internacional Cinematográfico do Uruguai [Uruguai, March, 2010]
Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente [Argentina, April 2010]
CPH PIX [Denmark, April 2010]
San Francisco International Film Festival [U.S.A., Abril 2010]
Jeonju International Film Festival [Coreia, May 2010]
Munich International Film Festival [Germany, May 2010]
Era New Horizons [Poland, July 2010]
New Zealand International Film Festival [Nova Zelandia, July 2010]
Melbourne International Film Festival [Austrália, Julyo 2010]

It is impossible to describe the story without betraying the spirit of the film, which focuses on the experience of discovery and enchantment. The only possibility is to recommend with conviction this pearl, because it will most likely win the Mostra best contemporary film title.

Sérgio Alpendre

cineclick

Poetry and mischief mix to idiosyncratic effect in the latest from Eugène Green, one of European cinema’s most distinctive voices (The Living World, Le Pont des Arts). Largely shot in Portuguese, this is at once a film about film, a sidelong tribute to Portuguese cinema (more than one Oliveira regular appears in the cast) and a love letter to the city of Lisbon. Perversely, Green casts a Portuguese performer, Leonor Baldaque, as a French actress who comes to Lisbon to shoot a minimalist costume romance. Exploring the city, Baldaque’s Julie forms connections with, first, a solitary aristocrat (Diogo Dória), then her co-star (Adrien Michaux) – but her most telling encounters prove to be with a young orphaned boy and with the nun of the title, the real-life counterpart to her film role. Adding a further layer of self-reference, the French director of Julie’s film is none other than 'Denis Verde’ – Eugène Green himself, on affable form. As in all Green’s films, Raphäel O’Byrne’s photography adds luminous grace to a stylised conception, while ample interludes of fado music make this a film that will be equally hard to resist for Green fans and lovers of Lisbon.

Jonathan Romney The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival

In my story, a young actress comes into contact with Mariane from the Portuguese Letters because she must play her character in a film, and finds in the world echoes of the fictional character, first in the parallel with her own love life, then in the figure of a real nun, who seems to have already reached a higher degree of wisdom. In opposition to Guillerargue’s main character, the young actress doesn’t get trapped in a circle of sentimental despair, but rushes into the gap that has opened before her. This path takes the form of a revelation of love’s greatness, a perpetual movement that carries us off towards our fellow beings, and also towards the source of everything, where we discover the world’s meaning and unity.

The core of the story was born in my imagination a long time ago, and was already situated in Lisbon, even if this city was only a mythical place for me. Since then, I’ve had the chance to become acquainted with the town, and I’ve seen the fictional characters grow and take root in the urban reality. In a certain way, it is through the discovery of Lisbon’s reality, in its sensual materiality and spiritual mystery, that Julie de Hauranne, the heroine of The Portuguese Nun, finds the way of her destiny, and the path to joy.

There is a demagogical reflex that consists in rejecting the slightest “cultural reference” found in an art work, and denouncing it as a manifestation of “elitism”. I think that culture, as agriculture, is meant to feed us, and that, as the body results from all the food we have consumed, the artist’s mind is formed in great part by cultural experiences. To share them with the viewers is not an act of contempt towards them, but on the contrary a gesture of generosity and respect. Besides, if a work of art is really full of life and fertile, the viewer doesn’t have to know all the references to be touched: a lot of Shakespeare’s and Racine’s verses contain “references” that have always been unknown to a great part of their audiences, but that has never been an obstacle to the success of their plays.

The enemies of “elitism”, in general also require a film to have a political “message”. I don’t believe that cinema can directly change relations of power, nor that that is its role. But a cinematic experience can change the viewer’s mind. In that way, The Portuguese Nun may be a political film, because it could open up in those who see it a path to liberty, which is, above all, an inner state.

Because the Portuguese capital is one of the leading characters of the film, it seemed essential to include its audible soul, which is fado. This musical and poetical form, deeply rooted in the city, is all but folkloric, and represents what is most essential in Portuguese culture: the meeting, in the present, of memory and desire, of past and future, simultaneously source of “a majestic sadness” and creative energy. I was fortunate enough to obtain the collaboration of two of the today’s greatest fado singers, Camané and Aldina Duarte.

It was also important to me to include in the film the presence of the Encoberto – the Hidden One- who is the subject of the most important Portuguese myth. The expectation of the “Fifth Empire”, a messianic hope theorised by Father António Vieira and Fernando Pessoa, and incarnated by King D. Sebastião, is subjacent in The Portuguese Nun, but on a metaphoric level. In a world that seems everyday more like a conglomeration of fragments with no connexion between them, it is the search, illuminated by hope, for a path that would give meaning to human existence.

The Portuguese Letters – Although they belong to French literature, they are almost better known in Portugal than in itheir original country. The name concerns five letters, published in Paris in 1669, with no author’s name, and with the mention “translated from Portuguese”. Modern critics attribute this text, with a certain assurance, to Gabriel de Lavergne de Guilleragues, a diplomat and man of letters who didn’t write any other notable work. The letters are sent by a Portuguese nun to a French naval officer with whom she had an affair and who abandoned her. When they were published they aroused a controversy concerning their “authenticity”. In fact, Mariana Alcoforado really existed, and lived a similar passion in her convent in Beja. The Letters’ author surely knew this story. But there’s no indicationthat he had seen the real nun’s writings, and several elements make it impossible for them to be a translation: among other details, the heroine says in one of her letters that from the balcony of her convent cell in Beja, a city located in inland Alentejo, near the Spanish border, she contemplates… the sea. The text doesn’t have any dramatic structure, but the readers have always been stricken by the psychological truth it carries. Rilke translated the Letters into German, and the poet Eugénio de Andrade, among others, gave a version in Portuguese.

O Encoberto – the Hidden One – The origin of the Encoberto myth can probably be found in Hebraic messianism, and arose in the begin of the 16th century, when Cristãos-novos, Portuguese Jews forced to convert, and their fellow believers in exile, hoped to return to their religion and homeland thanks to the coming of a Saviour. These mystical beliefs were expressed for the first time in literary form by Bandarra the shoemaker, an Old-Christian himself, whose prophetic verses were condemned for “Judaism” by the Inquisition. But this idea took on another meaning when, in 1582, after a dynastic crisis, Portugal was incorporated into the crown of Castile. The idea then spread that the young king D. Sebastião, whom nobody had seen die in the battle of Alcacer Quibir, was only hiding, and would return to restore Portuguese independence. Independence became a reality after the 1640 revolution and the instauration of the Bragança dynasty, but that didn’t put an end to the idea of the Encoberto’s return. On the contrary, the great preacher and writer Father António Vieira, in História do futuro and other texts, developped the myth: D. Sebastião (who traditionally must return on a white horse, on a day with fog over the Tagus) will appear in several incarnations, and always in an unexpected way. When he returns definitively, it will be to establish the Fifth Empire, a state of universal peace. This myth has had a huge influence on Portuguese culture, up until Fernando Pessoa, who thought himself to be –and who perhaps was- one of the incarnations of the Encoberto.

Fado – The name of this musical and poetic form comes from a dance practiced by the black slaves in Brazil, in the 18th century, and which is thought to have influenced the lunduns, a sub-genre of the modinhas appreciated in Lisbon salons in “classical” times. Around 1830 fado returned to its popular origins in a form of song that could be heard in the taverns and brothels of the Mouraria a poor neighbourhood in the capital, and it continued to develop as a living art until today. It is a monodic song-form, accompanied by the twelve cord Portuguese guitar, and the viola, or classical guitar. The interpretation of the text is very important, and while the viola keeps the bass and a regular rhythm, the singer and the Portuguese guitar player can provide ornaments and diminutions, as in baroque music. The texts, sometimes written by the fadistas themselves, or by great poets (in the film, “M.F.” Is by Aldina Duarte, while “Ser aquele” and “Mote” are by Fernando Pessoa) often use existing melodies, adapted to become the particular expression of the poem¹. Fado corresponds to the etymology of its name, since in most cases it is the expression of a destiny, that is simultaneously a regretted past and a desired future, both meeting in the present. Between the beginning of the 20th century and the 1974 Revolution, fado attained its golden age, with Amália Rodrigues, Maria Teresa de Noronha, Alfredo Marceneiro, Lucília do Carmo, and Argentina Santos (who still sings). Since then a new generation of artists has emerged. Besides Camané and Aldina Duarte, whom we hear and see in the film, we should mention Hélder Moutinho, Pedro Moutinho (Camané’s brothers), and among the youngest artists, Carminho and Marco Oliveira. In real fado houses singing takes place very late in the evening, or during the night, in a semi-obscurity, and the performers frequently keep their eyes shut. Fado is closely tied to the city of Lisbon, but another form of fado, quite different, is sung by students in Coimbra.

¹All the songs we hear in the film are traditional fados: “Ser aquele” and “M.F.” use the “Fado menor”, “Xaile encarnado” has elements from the “Fado corrido” and the “Fado Mouraria”, “Esquina de rua” is sung on the “Fado Tango” and “Mote” on the “Fado Isabel”.