THE TSUGUA DIARIES

A country house in Portugal in the summer of 2020. Three people (Carloto Cotta, Crista Alfaiate, João Nunes Monteiro) spend the days of lockdown doing whatever comes up: they build a butterfly house in the garden, clean, dance at night to music from the kitchen radio, sleep, eat, bicker in passing. The film records each day, dated – only in reverse, from the last day to the first. And the further back it goes, the more it becomes clear that there is more beyond the frame: a film crew, rules, a shoot thrown off course by a breach of the hygiene protocol. “The Tsugua Diaries” by Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes, Portugal 2021, is diary and making-of at once, both invented and both true.

Shot on 16mm, with sun, dust and plenty of green, the film is one of the lightest responses to the lockdown year: playful, self-ironic, without complaint. The reversal of the title (“Tsugua” is “August” backwards) gives away the method. It premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2021; it later screened at the New York Film Festival. “The Tsugua Diaries” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2021.