Vancouver Premiere

“Illuminated with mystery and wonder … Fire of Wind​’s attention to light and shadow, to the texture of faces and of tree bark, of foliage and terrain, is among the most careful that I’ve ever seen.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

The grape harvest in Portugal’s Alentejo region provides a rhythmic process, a landscape under piercing, glowing light, and a historical reference point for collective action in Marta Mateus’s debut feature. Mateus, who grew up in the area, is a confident manipulator of time. Her cast of mostly nonprofessionals is introduced in early scenes of wind-soundtracked field labour. When a runaway bull disrupts this activity, past and present begin to overlap. As the workers take refuge in the trees—a safety measure and a work suspension—they declaim poetry and, with the camera’s complicity, summon the time of the Carnation Revolution. Straub-Huillet might come to mind, yet Mateus relies less on literary texts, more on questions and memories. What kind of historical continuity is still alive in the plants and weathered hands glimpsed over a single evening? Mateus also acts as co-cinematographer; her editor is Claire Atherton, the longtime collaborator of Chantal Akerman.

In Portuguese with English subtitles

One of the Best Films of 2024 (#4) Jonathan Rosenbaum, Sight and Sound

“An elegant portrait of solidarity … [Unfolds] like an eerie folk tale, but one grounded in the blood, sweat, and tears of a real-life community.”

Beatrice Loayza, The New York Times
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