OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST opened worldwide last year in the Director’s Fortnight, a parallel section within Cannes Film Festival. It was also presented in over 30 film festivals all over the world and won more than 15 awards, namely Best Film Award in Valdívia, São Paulo and Buenos Aires, FIPRESCI Award in Vienna, and Silver Lady Harimaguada and José Rivero Award for Best Young Director in Las Palmas Film Festival.
OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST, a co-production between O Som e a Fúria and Shellac Sud, is a film about what it means to live in the heart of Portugal, amid the mountains. The month of August is abuzz with people and activity. Emigrants return home, set off fireworks, fight fires, sing karaoke, hurl themselves from bridges, hunt wild boar, drink beer, make babies. If the director and film crew had got straight to it and resisted the temptation to join in the festivities the synopsis would come down to: OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST follows the affective relationship between a father and daughter, and the daughter’s cousin, all musicians in a dance band.
At the same time, Gomes’ first feature, THE FACE YOU DESERVE, will also be released in DVD. Awarded in the fisrt edition of IndieLisboa with the Critic’s Prize and Best Photography Award for a Portuguese Film, THE FACE YOU DESERVE turns around Francisco, a very emotionally immature character who has to deal with the difficult transition to the thirties.
This DVD edition includes the short film “Canticle of All Creatures”, Best Portuguese Film in Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival 2006, as well as an audio comment by Portuguese critics Francisco Ferreira and Luís Miguel Oliveira, and the French Jean-Philippe Tessé and Jean-Pierre Rehm, and a making of entitled Around the tree.