LA DURMIENTE explores the story of the medieval Infanta Beatriz of Portugal through fabulation and children’s imagination. Shot entirely at the Monastery of Sancti Spiritus in Toro, a space once inhabited by Beatriz and where her tomb lies, the film looks at children staging and interpreting fragments of the life of this character erased by history, yet preponderant in the Portuguese dynastic crisis of 1383.
Drawing on a little-known story about Queen Beatrice of Portugal, who temporarily came to power at the end of the 14th century amidst a dynastic crisis, Maria Inês Gonçalves weaves a film with the texture of a fairytale, and builds on the parallel this specific kind of story makes with childhood. The director combines the aesthetic register of the Late Middle Ages with the notion of political games to playfully reflect on the political marginalisation of women and their historical instrumentalisation in dynastic machinations and men’s power struggles. Using a cast entirely composed of children and focusing not just on the Infanta’s “story,” but also on small semi-documentary moments of fun and frolicking, LA DURMIENTE becomes a very clever play on the idea of historical adaptation. (Flavia Dima)
Maria Inês Gonçalves studied film at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School and at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, with a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Her graduation short O Meu Pijama premiered at the Premiers Plans D’Angers. O Banho, a short made in her Master’s degree, premiered at FidMarseille and was shown in ZINEBI, Festival dei Popoli, Bogoshorts, Laceno D’Oro, among others. La Durmiente is her first independent short film and was part of the film residency program NOKA Mentoring 2022.
