(Be)Longing

Rural life endures in a quiet Portuguese mountain village

(Be)Longing follows the everyday life of the forty nine inhabitants of a small mountain village in northern Portugal, a place deeply marked by emigration and by the gradual disappearance of a rural world based on subsistence farming. Filmed in Uz, the native land of the director’s maternal grandparents, the documentary observes the community as its members work the fields, tend to their animals and move through the seasons while holding on to traditions inherited from previous generations. The camera develops an evident complicity with the people it films, which allows the beauty and hardship of this environment to emerge with clarity. What remains is a way of life that appears to come from another era yet survives in the twenty first century through the persistence of the villagers.

Among the inhabitants we meet António, a former emigrant who returned home to fulfil his wish of living once again in the place where he was born and who prepares the summer festivities that blend religious customs with popular celebrations. The film also focuses on Daniel, a young farmer and shepherd who resists the pull of emigration and spends his days cultivating the land and caring for cows and sheep while dreaming of finding a partner. His hopes intertwine with the arrival of summer and with the brief possibility of love that emerges during the festivities, a feeling that proves fleeting and leaves him imagining other options for the future. Through these intertwined stories, (Be)Longing captures solitude, solidarity and resilience in a community where the past, the present and an uncertain future coexist, offering a rich portrait of a rural world under threat from the pressures of modernity.