Arabian Nights (Volume II) [The Desolate One]

In Portugal – a European country in crisis – a film director proposes to build fictional stories from the miserable reality he is immersed in. However, failing to find meaning in his work, he takes the coward’s way out and leaves the beautiful Scheherazade to stand in his shoes. She will require enthusiasm and courage so as not to bore the king with sad stories of this country. As the nights go by, restlessness leads to desolation and in turn to enchantment! Thus, Scheherazade organizes the stories she tells the king in three volumes. She begins like this: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that in a sad country among all countries...”

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Script: Miguel Gomes, Mariana Ricardo, Telmo Churro

Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, (“The Inebriating Chorus of the Chaffinches”), Mario Castanheira (“The Story of the Cockerel and the Fire”)

Editing: Telmo Churro, Pedro Filipe Marques, Miguel Gomes

Sound: Vasco Pimentel

Actors: Crista Alfaiate, Adriano Luz, Americo Silva, RogerioSamora, Carloto Cotta, Fernanda Loureiro, Jing Jing Guo, Chico Chapas, Quiterio, Bernardo Alves

Production: O som e a furia (Portugal) &Shellac Sud (France) & Komplizen Films (Germany)& Box Production (Switzerland)

Producers: Luis Urbano, Sandro Aguilar, Thomas Ordonneau, Jonas Dornbach, Janine Jackowski, Maren Ade, Elena Tatti, Thierry Spicher, Elodie Brunner

Co-production: Agat Films et Michel Merkt

Costumes: Silvia Grabowski, Lucha D’Ore

Production Design: Bruno Duarte, Artur Pinheiro

Format: DCP Color

Production Country: Portugal-France-Germany-Switzerland

Production Year: 2015

Duration: 132

Distribution in Greece: Seven Films/ Spentzos FilmsYannis DrepasT. +30 210 3818 777drepas@sevenfilms.grwww.sevenfilms.gr

Contact: The Match Factory, GermanyT. +49 30 443 190 520F. +49 30 443 190 530info@matchfactory.dewww.the-match-factory.com

Miguel Gomes

Miguel Gomes was born in Lisbon in 1972. He graduated from the Lisbon Film and Theatre School and worked as a film critic. Gomes directed several short films presented and awarded in international film festivals and his first feature film The Face You Deserve (2004) was released in Portugal and France. His next feature films, Our Beloved Month of August (Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight 2008), Tabu (Berlinale Official Competition 2012: Alfred Bauer and FIPRESCI awards), and Arabian Nights (a film in three parts, Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, 2015) confirm his international success and projection. Gomes is presently working on Savagery, based on Euclides da Cunha’s masterpiece Os Sertões, and developing The Grand Tour, a fiction feature project, co-written with Mariana Ricardo, Telmo Churro, and Maureen Fazendeiro.