Insider’s Blog: Arabian Nights

By Adam Cook

Among the most exciting films to look forward to at the Vancouver International Film Festival this year is Arabian Nights. Directed by Miguel Gomes, the Portuguese auteur who earned acclaim with his previous features Our Beloved Month of August (2008) and Tabu (2011), this mega-ambitious work is composed of three individual films totaling over six hours (Titled, sequentially: The Restless One,The Desolate One, and The Enchanted One). Inspired by the famous collection of folk tales, Arabian Nights does not adapt this source material, but borrows its structure, allowing Gomes to string together a collection of stories that vary in tone, mood, and style, and range from documentary to fiction and somewhere in between—but all connect with themes concerning present-day Portugal’s economic disparity.

Gomes hired reporters to research different stories around the country on which to base the film’s chapters. The results…