The Tsugua Diaries is a hangout film in the process of being at once made and unmade, where the line between life and cinema is enchantingly hazy. It is a wistful and sunny antidote to lockdown blues, Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes’s infectious summer tale blurs the line between cinema and life.

When lockdown halted production, Lisbon-based filmmakers Miguel Gomes (Tabu, Arabian Nights) and Maureen Fazendeiro (Black Sun, Motu Maeva) incorporated their interrupted project into a playful meta-premise: friends Crista, Carloto and João are building a greenhouse for butterflies, cleaning out an above-ground pool and participating in spontaneous dance parties when there is a sudden global virus outbreak.

Unfolding throughout the month of August and told in reverse chronological order, this series of vignettes revels in vibrant color, and soon, we discover that there is more going on beyond the limits of the camera frame. Delve into the colorful world of one of the most playful films of the pandemic, for which personal restrictions provided a source of inspiration and pure joy in the creative process. The Tsugua Diaries is beguiling new film that combines the rigorous process of moviemaking with the torpor of pandemic life, a wistful antidote to isolation.

An Official Selection of the 59th New York Film Festival