Vienna-based sales company Square Eyes picked up rights for Maureen Fazendeiro’s solo directorial feature debut “The Seasons” ahead of its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, where it will compete for the coveted Golden Leopard.
The documentary is a journey via the real history and the tales of the Portuguese region of Alentejo and its people told through the story of a couple of German archaelogists as well as accounts of rural workers, fieldnotes, scientific drawings, amateur footage and art.
In her director’s statement, Fazendeiro, who co-directed “The Tsugua Diaries” with Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes, says the film “excavates the landscape, the voices and gestures of the people of Alentejo to uncover the vestiges of a shared history, one of wars and revolutions, fear and resistance, permanence and metamorphosis.”
Speaking with Variety, Fazendeiro says it’s been 10 years this August since she read an article in a newspaper about the life and work of archaelogists Georg and Vera Leisner, who spent decades studying fourth and third millennia BC megalithic sites in Iberia, settling in Portugal during WWII. “[They] made the first inventory of megalithic monuments of the iberian peninsula, a work still very important today to understand the dawn of the European civilization,” said the filmmaker.
“I went In their footstep to visit those monuments and look at the landscape of the Alentejo region, a now deserted lthat was the center of the peninsula thousands of years ago,” she continues. “There I met shepherds, archaeologists, poets, rural workers, trees and stones. They shared with me their stories, beliefs, archives, poems and songs. I collected and documented their poetical and political imaginary and, like an archaeologist, tried to to reassemble the historical time from those fragments.”
Square Eyes’ Wouter Jansen said: “We’ve been following ‘The Seasons’ for the past years after seeing it pitched at FIDlab and are very enthusiastic to be on board with this great team. The film is an exciting and imaginative exploration of the Alentejo region, transporting us through time using folklore, science and other sources. [‘The Seasons’ is the] type of film we love at Square Eyes.
Fazendeiro is a French filmmaker living in Lisbon. On top of co-directing “The Tsugua Diaries” with Gomes, Fazendeiro also co-wrote the auteur’s latest, “Grand Tour” and works with Gomes as a casting director. Her films have been screened at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, New York, Toronto, Marseille and other prestigious festivals. The 78th Locarno Film Festival will be held from Aug. 6 to Aug. 16, 2025.
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