Trás-os-montes

After the 1974 Portuguese revolution, Portuguese filmmakers thronged to Trás-os-Montes, in order to be inspired by past and present, by the landscape and the people in this northern Portuguese province. António Reis and Margarida Martins Cordeiro spent almost two years there to make their film, which is without any doubt the most ambitious of all the films dealing with the province. Thanks to their prolonged stay in the villages of Bragança and Miranda do Douro, they were able to win the confidence of the residents. This resulted in a number of reconstructions, even pageants, including traditional costumes.
For Reis and Martins Cordeiro, the roots of Portugal as a nation lie in Trás-os-Montes. Most of the leading characters are children and women, as male workers are the province's main export commodity. Absence (of relatives, of jobs, of modem technology, etc.) is therefore a recurrent theme. Still, trás-os-montes ends optimistically with a lengthy shot, in half dark, of the steamtrain to Oporto, carrying one of the boys from the district, allowing him to continue his studies in agricultural engineering in the big city. It is striking to see how the filmmakers have succeeded in doing justice to the people of the province. With its long pans, its fragmentary character, its mixture of past and present, trás-os-montes is not an easy film, but one that is worth seeing in all respects.