Since his first film in 2000, the mesmerising O Fantasma, Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues has continually cast his gaze over the ever-changing landscape of Lisbon, its physical transformations and its well of mysteries. Co-directed with his longtime partner and artistic collaborator João Rui Guerra da Mata, this evocative documentary views the city through the lens of both autobiographical and cinematic nostalgia.
The film’s starting point is a personal one. Having inherited his grandparents’ flat, Rodrigues is intrigued by the fact that the window of this complex looks over the location of Paulo Rocha’s The Green Years, a 1963 cult classic that spearheaded Novo Cinema, the Portuguese new wave. Antonioniesque in its cinematography and plot, Rocha’s film charted a doomed working-class romance, shot in a rapidly urbanising Lisbon hemmed in by new developments and the nouveaux riche.
