Advanced search

A house of green azulejos, a garden, a magnolia. Rooms full of objects from past lives here. Traces of time, rooms full of objects from past lives here. Traces of time, gestures and affects.

Amid the fog and the labyrinth of time, while machines probe the geological depths of the mountain, a shepherd searches for an errant cow. Childhood finds its way back, the mountain transforms itself, the cycle continues.

What is a border? Besides the many uses and misuses of this word in our daily lives, a border is made by the people that inhabit it. This simple principle is the base of Iván Castiñeiras' masterful debut: Gods of Stone. Narrated as an odyssey moving back and forth in time, the film encounters the population living around the most ancient border in Europe: the one dividing Spain and Portugal. From smugglers to kings, from children to shepherds, this stunningly beautiful land becomes the theatre for history repeating itself. Addressing some of the crucial issues that interest many peripheral spaces in Europe, mining, and emigration, Gods of Stone shows the effects of far away political decisions on the daily life of common people. Castiñeiras' film is a true gem, an ode to a people absent from mainstream culture, that tells us stories of resilience and love, of political battles and exile, in a never ending cycle of life in which the struggles change shape but remain identical in their substance. Playful, poetic and heartwarming, shot in a sublime 16mm, Gods of Stone transcends ethnography and uses cinema to search, and find, the soul of the people it portrays.

..so the past and the future merge into a single present, in the terrible and unusual life of the Cursed Courtyard. " Ivo Andric"