The Star and Shadow Cinema is delighted to premier in the UK the new documentary of the award-winning Portuguese director, Miguel Gonçalves Mendes, O Labirinto da Saudade (Saudade’s Labyrinth), produced by Longshot. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film director.

This event is sponsored by Instituto Camões, with the support of the Portuguese Consulate-General in Manchester

Saudade's Labyrinth (O Labirinto da Saudade) Synopsis

Miguel Gonçalves Mendes (José e Pilar) adapts to the cinema one of the most lucid works of Portuguese culture – “Saudade's Labyrinth" (O Labirinto da Saudade, translated to English as “A Mythic Psychoanalysis of the Portuguese Destiny”), on a unique journey inside the brilliant mind of Eduardo Lourenço. At the age of 94, the writer and philosopher Eduardo Lourenço projects through his memory the questions that still remain in him today. Which traumas have defined us as Portuguese people? Who are we? What have we done? Which atrocities have we committed? Which path should we follow? These questions are the starting point to “O Labirinto da Saudade”, a film about the “condemned nation since its inceptions to run out of dreams larger than itself”, but also the celebration of the life and work of one of the greatest authors of Portuguese Culture.

Narrated and starring Eduardo Lourenço himself, the documentary walks through his memory and the history of Portugal. Throughout the journey, he crosses paths with ghosts from our past and friends from his present - outstanding figures of the Lusophone culture such as Álvaro Siza Vieira (Portuguese acclaimed architect), José Carlos Vasconcelos (Portuguese writer), Diogo Dória (Portuguese lawyer and writer), Gonçalo M. Tavares (Portuguese writer), Lídia Jorge (Portuguese writer), Ricardo Araújo Pereira (Portuguese comedian) and Gregório Duvivier (Brazilian comedian), who assume the role of interlocutors and drivers of the reflections written in the book.

Miguel Gonçalves Mendes' bio

Miguel Gonçalves Mendes was born is 1978 in Covilhã, Portugal. He worked as an actor, director and producer and directed several feature films and documentaries. 

In 2002, he founded JumpCut, a cinema and theatre producer, based in Lisbon.

He is currently one of the established names of the new generation of Portuguese filmmakers. He held a series of award-winning documentaries, experimental films and projects on request.

His film Floripes, released in 2007, is his first hybrid production (documentary-fiction), a format the director began to explore. In 2011, he had the debut of his project José e Pilar, in co-production with O2Filmes and the Spanish producer El Deseo (from the Almodovar brothers). 

Internationally acclaimed by critics and audiences, the film collected awards in several festivals and was elected to represent Portugal in the category of Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2012. Among his most recent works is the series “I’ve nothing of my own", displayed by Canal Brazil in 2013.

In 2018, Miguel adapted to the cinema one of the most lucid works of Portuguese culture – “Saudade's Labyrinth" from Eduardo Lourenço – on a unique journey inside a brilliant mind.

Miguel’s most recent project is the documentary MEANING OF LIFE - a film that tells the story of a young man with Amyloidosis and his exciting search for purpose, meaning and truth. In parallel, Miguel is also developing the long fiction film "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ", the controversial adaptation novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago.

Saudade is a word which exists only in Portuguese Language, it is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.