20. UNDER|DOX 09-15 OKT 2025

Weaving together accounts of rural workers and field notes of a couple of archaeologists, amateur footage and scientific drawings, legends, poems, and songs, ”As Estações” is a journey through the real history and the tales of a region in southern Portugal, Alentejo, and a portrait of the people who have lived there. – Locarno Film Festival

Nothing much happens in the fields, the farms and the forests of Alentejo’s countryside on a day-to-day basis – only the daily life of the animals (goats, rabbits and such), who humans keep bothering, whether it is children for mere fun or adults for livestock farming purposes. What really interests the director is the past of the place, its numerous layers of stories that form history in the greatest sense of the word. The seasons of the title constitute decades, or even centuries for humans. They are to be taken from the point of view of the trees (like the majestic, ancient cork oak that Fazendeiro uses as the subject of a gorgeous final panning shot), or the dolmens, that are one of the cornerstones of the film. – International Cinephile Society

Maureen Fazendeiro
PT, FR, ES AT 2025
82 min | Portuguese, German