A film that is not just what it looks like is something of a cliché that could be said about many other films. But not this time. We are talking about a film that was commissioned by the municipality of Alcanena, in Ribatejo, in which the director was given carte blanche. Supposedly the film should serve to promote the region and a nearby town called Minde, however the result is an original cinematographic work, entirely different from the expected institutional film. In fact, the original proposal would have been attractive enough, and maintained as such, if it weren't for the appearance, by mere chance, of an absolutely fascinating character: Cid Manata. Despite the richness of the landscape that takes on different hues, sometimes deeply bucolic and rural, sometimes shaped by the heavy presence of the industrial ruins, Cid's life story by itself adds a post-apocalyptic touch to this account, as if that land were ill-fated. For not having lived, in fact, the dream of the post-revolutionary freedom, which did not change the lives of his fellow town’s people, Cid, as many others living far away from the city center, gets old and aimless. The film has a contagious funny twist touching upon certain traits of our human richness, the same candor, the same brief smiles, which we have already seen in Agnès Varda, the filmmaker to whom the film is dedicated. (MM)