Pedro Magano, director

Creating a tale for both children and adults has always been a personal ambition of the director.

Tales are simple stories, easy to understand and written for all ages, where the magic resides in how each reader interprets a universal message they evoke. Simple stories that hide, within their subtle nuances, fundamental philosophical questions such as Life, Death, and Time.

The writer Mia Couto wrote a tale called “A Morte, o Tempo e o Velho” (“Death, Time and the Old Man”), included in his 2001 book Na berma de nenhuma estrada. This story follows an Old Man who seeks out Death to free himself from the burden of life. But when he finally finds her—in the form of a wild dog, accompanied by Time—Death chooses to immortalize the Old Man instead of fulfilling his fatalistic wish, replacing him with Time after falling in love with the descriptions of his dreams. The Gods have a fascination for Humans.

Aristophanes, a conservative hostile to the gods and a defender of Athens’ traditional democratic values, wrote a play titled The Birds, in which he criticizes the corruption shaping Athenian society. Two disillusioned Athenians—Tereus and Procne—transformed into birds by the gods, wish to found a new city for Humans and Birds. Cloudcuckooland!

These two works form the foundation of the screenplay for this feature film, titled “The Birds.”

The Greek play inspired the film’s monologues and dialogues, its imagery, and its aesthetic concept. The ancestral war between Humans, Gods and Birds is the central theme of this feature. In Ancient Greece, the conflict between Gods and Humans was a serious matter of debate, an attempt to explain the reason for Life through their relationship. Today, these tales have become comic metaphors—yet they remain essential to our search for the “whys” of Life, containing within them the secular behavioural history of humankind, as well as the human traits projected onto the gods we invent.

Mia Couto’s tale inspired the creation of the characters and the narrative form of the film. In this adaptation, the intentions of the characters diverge from those in the original, while their roles remain intact. Unlike Mia Couto’s story, the Old Man does not search for Death; she seeks him out, accompanied by Time, arriving aboard a traditional moliceiro boat, eager to amuse herself with the mortality of a foolish human. But when this foolish human realises he is merely a pawn in Death’s hands—that his life is cyclical and repetitive (as ours is!)—he attempts to bend and control his own fate. Death does not take this kindly and, in the end, refuses to take him with her, believing the foolish human disrespected her divine status.

The Old Man lives in a Purgatory—isolated and surrounded by water—on a dead lagoon with muddy banks. He repeats the same routine of habits (as we do in life) and dreams of escaping that place to found a city for Humans and Birds: Cloudcuckooland.

The Old Man hates the Gods and shares his laments with a cockatiel, the Hoopoe, whom he keeps trapped in a cage. The bird represents a metaphor for his own existence, imprisoned in that hostile place without understanding the reason for his confinement. However, the Old Man finds freedom in the words of the books he discovers in the library during his furtive wanderings through the city.

The narrative of the film is cyclical and reflects the concept of life as infinitely repetitive, as well as the cyclical nature of Time as we know it. The film’s structure is divided into three equal parts in terms of narrative form, though they differ in content and in the characters’ interpretation of the events.

Pedro Magano, director and producer

Theaters Showing the Film

Cinema City Alvalade (Lisboa)

Cinema Ideal (Lisboa)

Fernando Lopes (Lisboa)

UCI Corte Inglés (Lisboa)

NOS Alvaláxia  (Lisboa)

Cinema Trindade (Porto)

UCI Arrábida (Porto)

NOS Shop Spot (Porto)

Casa de Cinema de Coimbra

NOS Alma Shopping (Coimbra)

Cinema City Leiria

Castello Lopes W Shopping (Santarém)

Festivals – Official Selections

Making-of

Cast

Gustavo Sumpta
Mafalda Rocha

Crew

1st Assistant Director: Tânia Teixeira
Sound Recording: Duarte Ferreira
Sound Design & 5.1 Mix: Maurício d’Orey
Editing: Nuno Rocha, Pedro Magano
Color Grading: Pedro Negrão
Production Design: Ângelo Costa
Costumes: Paula Gomes, Branca Sarabando
Still Photography: Jorge Costa
1st Assistant Camera: Tiago Faria
2nd Assistant Camera: Ricardo Barros
Special Effects: Hugo Raposo, Élio Mateus
Graphic Design: Sérgio Duarte, Cristiana Rodrigues
Production Assistants: Sara Mendes, Diogo Carvalho
Make-up: Ana Nunes
Director of Photography: Manuel Pinto Barros
Producer: Pedro Sá
Director: Pedro Magano

Acknowledgments

Confeitaria Peixinho
Cinema Avenida
Teatro Aveirense
Barbearia Beira-Mar
Quinto Palco
Instituto da Segurança Social, I.P. — Aveiro District Centre
Aveiro Arts House
Cazita
Filmes da Mente
Blue Pack
Duas Faces

Technical Details

Country: Portugal
Runtime: 73 min
Type: Fiction Feature Film
Year of Production: 2023
Release Year: 2024 (expected)
4K, Color, 5.1