Bela Mandil

It is said that in the Portuguese region of Bela Mandil, the echoes and phantoms of history – the murdered lovers who transgressed the warring lines of Christian and Muslim religions during the bloody struggle for the Iberian Peninsula in the 1490s – still linger. Helena Estrela’s calmly intense film intermingles the daily, current activities of fisherman at work on the shore, with stylised glimpses of a tragic tale recalling “Romeo and Juliet” and Murnau’s TABU. Must these romantic rebels separate, or accept a cruel death? The past and the present interpenetrate in sound, shadow and sea waves, playing upon an eternal landscape. (Adrian Martin)

In the presence of Helena Estrela.