Our Beloved Month Of August 2008

Our Beloved Month Of August is a heady mixture of fiction and documentary, and both at the same time. The film's unique composition is partly accidental: When Gomes couldn't find the cast and funding for his film, he and the crew strode headlong anyway towards the August music festivals in rural Portugal and shot everything and everyone possible. The result is an hour of ethnographic document of a community. Among this milieu of rituals, legends, characters and music, a fictional narrative slowly emerges, centring on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a travelling band. The interplay of documentary and fiction playfully challenges audience expectation and the possibilities inherent in cinematic storytelling, all while gliding along to the provincial Portuguese pop music.