On a sunny morning in Central London’s Soho House, Jack Toye met renowned Portuguese director, Miguel Gomes, for a chat about his latest film, Arabian Nights Vol I, II, and III – a six-and-a-half hour epic film, split into three parts, which screened in the Quinzaine section at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Jack: Auspicious Miguel, it has reached me that you’re in the UK promoting your new films, Arabian Nights Vol I, II, and III. Many thanks for taking the time to talk to us here at Take One. For 3 days your films entertained, moved and amazed me in the Theatre Croisette in the JW Marriot Hotel at Cannes Film Festival 2015. Arabian Nights was by far my favourite film at the festival last year, what was the Cannes experience like for you as a director? You were last there as President of Semaine de la Critique in 2013?

Miguel: You know, some people say that Cannes is the worst place in the world to see cinema. It’s a paradox. They have the new films , lots of interesting films premiering there for the first time. At the same time it’s such a mess and a confusion. You have to run from one screening to another. It was very strange, this experience, to try to do something that looks like the opposite of showing a film in Cannes. Showing a film that is divided in three parts, that is three films, and you could see it every two days. It’s like a slow experience in the middle of a very, very fast show of films. But Cannes is always different, when I was in the jury of the Semaine de la Critique it was very relaxing. It’s much more comfortable but it’s not so exciting. I remember that my second festival with Arabian Nights was the opposite. Of Cannes. After Cannes, there were many interviews, running from one place to the other, and then I went to this festival that Aki Kaurismäki runs in almost the North Pole, in the North of Finland, in the Artic Circle, called Midnight Sun Film Festival, which has sun all the time, it’s never nighttime, because it’s so in the north. It was so relaxed. People watch the films in a circus tent. Normally they are drunk, which also happens in Cannes, but I think it’s healthier in the North Pole. It’s the opposite of this market-ruled thing in Cannes. It was something good for my health going then to Kaurismäki’s film festival and being in a tent with one thousand Finnish guys, drunk, singing karaoke and musical comedies from Finland in the 1940s.

Jack: This year at Berlinale, we had Ulrike Ottinger’s Chammiso’s Shadow (12 hrs) and Lav Diaz’s A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery(8hrs). Is it true that you initially wanted Arabian Nights to screen in Competition at Cannes and would the audience have then sat through all three volumes, or would it have been a different edit had you been in Competition?

Miguel: No. Me and my producer wanted the film in Competition, as every filmmaker and producer I think wants if they’re presenting the films in the festival. It was our aim, but it was not possible. We always edited the film to be shown in festivals and theatres. It was divided in three parts because we thought it was a good way to show the film. It was the good way because we thought we could create in each volume of the film, three very different cinematic, graphical experiences. So every film has its own mood, its own personality. We thought this was interesting. It was not supposed to be like this when we were shooting. We didn’t have any idea of what would be the film in the end. Then during the editing we thought this was the good way to structure the film and it could be a very good idea to show the film in Cannes, not in a day, in a row, but to show it over three different days. This was how Scheherazade told her stories too. She was not telling a marathon of stories. She would stop and let the desire of the King rise to hear new stories and the continuation of her story. Then she would flirt with this desire and the people that wanted to hear her stories. So we thought let’s do it the same way. If we edit it as a serial, a trilogy. Who makes these things? The main industry: the top of the industry… so normally blockbusters. In this case it was a utopic blockbuster. One that would probably not make much money at the box office, but that this contradiction was also interesting to have this mythology with the Princess Scheherazade, and genies and things like this. This attraction to fantasy in an artificial world, but at the same time a film about a poor country and the difficulties of the people who were living in this country: Portugal. So we thought a utopic blockbuster of the poor, maybe this could be interesting?

Jack: What is it like to be a left-leaning film director in the world of filmmaking today? Is it harder than being in a studio system and being “their man”?

Miguel: I don’t know… firstly, I would not describe myself as a left-wing filmmaker. I don’t think this is the first thing that would pop into my mind when talking about my work. But it’s true that mostly in the last years, from the moment when Portugal was subjected to this policy of austerity, imposed by Europe, that I think many Portuguese became a little bit more left-leaning, and so did I too, I could not not care about the situation. I had to deal with it in some way. And I do not hide the fact that I don’t have any sympathy for the previous government that was in charge of Portugal .

Jack: Were they right ring/centre right?

Miguel: They were a right wing government and they are gone now. At this moment, more than for instance in the UK, we still have a law for Cinema, that like in France for instance, protects or gives an opportunity of making films in a way, financing by the State, to compensate the imposition of mainstream taste by the market. So I have the opportunity to make my films and I think that’s a luxury. I don’t have any problems by filming things that can have a connection with left-wing policy, even if we have a right-wing government. There are some countries which cannot say the same, so I’m lucky.

Jack: It strikes me that Arabian Nights is a very effective way to get across this anti-austerity message in an age of slightly right-wing- leaning newspaper and TV media, Facebook and Twitter posts and online petitions. Is this style of producing a film something that could be replicated in the UK, Ireland and Greece for instance? Or is it unique to Portugal?

Miguel: I’ve thought about that as an idea, or wishful thinking. But then it doesn’t really depend on me. It’s up to “them”. I don’t think it should be imposing Arabian Nights as a model. We tried to tell our stories in places with difficulties. We tried to tell something about what is happening. I think that should be normal for filmmakers to do.

Jack: You were a film critic who moved on to making short films and then features. In the UK I can only really think of someone like Mark Cousins who is both a film critic and filmmaker. How do you feel your work compares to that of British filmmakers like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh who are arguably two of the UK’s most recognisable directors on the European
Film Festival circuit?

Miguel: You know I was a film critic many years ago, it was another century. So I will not talk about other people’s work now. This is something I have found now I don’t have to do. Let’s say that in general I’m more attached to a cinema that tries not to replicate the real world and life.

Jack: Many UK screenings of Arabian Nights are not giving the film three screenings together, but will programme them in over three weeks. Is this split between MUBI, a VOD platform, and New Wave Films, the distributor, standard across all territories that you’ve released the film in? What do you make of it as the director? It feels quite new to me to have that structure.

Miguel: I wish them good luck. My job is just to make the films and then I don’t have any strategy. I think in every country the film is shown in different ways. For instance, there are countries that try to show it in a row: they have screenings every day of the three volumes. Then there are countries that have a month between each volume, like in France or Portugal. Now this way is new showing in theatres but also available on a platform like MUBI, it’s interesting but I don’t have any idea how it will do. I have the sensation that this film has a connection with the viewer that you can invent your own rules to watch it. You have three films. You can decide which order and with which time period between every volume you want to see it. So with a platform like MUBI, I think you have that opportunity to do it as you want to. There is something that is an advantage with a platform like MUBI, so I wish them good luck.

Jack: Institut Francais I noticed features in the production company credits, and Vol I previewed at the Cine Lumiere in London. What role did they have in the film? You have a lot of partners to bring a six and half hour film to market.

Miguel: This was a co-production between four countries. One of them was of course Portgual, one France, and then Germany and Switzerland. In France, it’s traditionally that is more active on arthouse and world cinema. So it’s a traditional partner who has a cultural policy of trying to work for certain films to appear, which is difficult if they didn’t have that support. So they played a role in Arabian Nights, as they did from my second feature, this is my fourth. Our Beloved Month Of August was my second one, they had a small participation, it raised over the years and now it’s getting bigger.

Jack: Arabian Nights, Tabu and Our Beloved Month Of August, they all seem to show a real love for story-telling. Do you think the majority of cinema these days clings too tightly to form and function to fully embrace story?

Miguel: Don’t force me again to be a film critic. I would not say what the others are doing or not doing. For me, I would say it’s very important to show things in dependently of what we are telling as stories. It’s also important to tell stories and use these possibilities of fiction. So I don’t see how you can say no to one of them. I think both of them are important and for me its important that they are having a dialogue.

Jack: At the start of Volume I, one of the ship-makers says “I’m happy. I’m sad. I’m outrage.” Could this be an apt way to describe the directorial process when composing a film as expansive as this? Was it smooth sailing after a certain point?

Miguel: No, ha, it was wild sailing. Without knowing where I was going. I’m a little used to that, but not on this scale. This time it was a very long period of shooting, researching, writing and editing everything at the same time, because every time we finished one story, we were already working on another one for fourteen months. So I could not predict what kind of film I was making because I could never see the whole structure. I was dealing with parts of the film. I was not so scared though because I knew the richness of the film would come by its diversity. I would not like to have a homogeneous type of film. I wanted to go to many different kinds of ways of making cinema and telling stories and watching the country. But of course, the fact that you can never predict, meant sometimes once a week we’d be in a situation where we’d say “what the hell are we doing?!”. We didn’t know. It was impossible to know. We would see it in the end.

Jack: We hear a lot when guests visit Cambridge, they have a sense that their national cinema (if they’re from outside the UK) is strong, but they also feel like English-language cinema comes in and dictates the programming of their cinemas. Is it the same in Portugal? Has Arabian Nights been received as well in Portugal as it has been on the festival circuit around the world?

Miguel: When it opened in theatres, it made what is normal to make in arthouse cinema, so it’s not very sexy. It’s not particularly much, but it did OK in that that’s what normal to happen. In the end, with three films we made thirty-four thousand admissions, which is normal for a film like this. A bit like Tabu or Our Beloved Month Of August. Then of course, there are people that hate the film, and love the film, and like something in the film, and don’t like other stories. Which is also normal. This film is very elastic. You go from one story to the other and they are very, very different. So, the reactions were mixed for most of the films. If you ask me how the political class reacted to the film, because in a way they are represented in the film, I would say I don’t think they went to see the film because politicians in Portugal, they don’t want to go and watch this type of film in the cinema.

Jack: Hypothetical question: A mysterious figure walks up to you at the airport and offers you untold riches if you direct Star Wars Episode IX. Do you take the money and enter the Disney studio system, or politely decline?

Miguel: I would convince him to do something else. Maybe with a little bit less money. I would have to be honest and say I don’t know how to do a film like Star Wars. And I would have the suspicion that he was insane by inviting me to make that kind of film.

Jack: What are you up to next after the Arabian Nights press tour?

Miguel: I’m here talking with you now, but yesterday I was in Lisbon, trying to write with some other people a new film. After these three days here in London, I will go back and I think we are going to make this film, at least we are going to try. It’s a very different film, it’s a war film. There is a real war in the film which I don’t know how to do, but I’ll figure out.. I don’t know…maybe I’m on my own path to making Star Wars now?

Arabian Nights: Volume 1 – The Restless One opens Friday 22nd April

Arabian Nights: Volume 2 – The Desolate One opens Friday 29th April

Arabian Nights: Volume 3 – The Enchanted One opens Friday 6th May

httpvh://youtu.be/LG4F-JpULRA