Political films are often boring. Well intentioned films are even more boring. But since it's Miguel Gomes, the director of such genre defining, inventive, playful films as Our Beloved Month of August and Tabu, Arabian Nights is nothing but.

| Feb 14, 2021

Taken on its own, it often feels aimless and scattershot, but when viewed as part of a larger whole, it's spectacular - a wholly unique work of artistic activism.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 5, 2019

The script's wry sense of humour, the cast's natural performances and a patient directorial style make his message a lot more accessible than it might appear.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2019

The trilogy plays like a cry of frustration from a filmmaker who loves the people at the bottom and loathes the people at the top.

| Aug 21, 2017

here's nothing superfluous about it. The weight of the passage lies in the accumulation, progression, and collision of these people's stories.

| Jul 14, 2017

A mystical, social and filled with landscapes trip about a Portugal in crisis of everything. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 30, 2016

It is strongly advised to watch it over three days, not in a single sitting, especially since that's the best way to absorb its deeply felt compassion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 13, 2016

The film fires its political bullets through eccentric humour, madcap digressions, while most importantly, it shows generosity to acknowledge the faces of the men and women whose stories it is telling.

| May 10, 2016

Inventive and surprisingly moving.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2016

Roll on Volume Two.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2016

Needs to be viewed in its entirety in order to appreciate the depth of Portugal's malaise and the bold brilliance of Gomes's conceit.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2016

Think of Arabian Nights as a cinematic box set: three boundary-bursting, exuberant, empathetic films from Miguel Gomes, which build up into a portrait of present-day Portugal.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2016

Gomes's Arabian Nights exerts its own strange allure.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2016

A glowing lovesong to Portugal performed by a man who has mastered a range of exotic instruments.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 21, 2016

The first volume of Arabian Nights may be rooted more firmly in the present but past fiction and contemporary fact begin to intermingle and overlap in perfect disharmony.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 20, 2016

a restless work of cultural reframing and repositioning that risks one giant bellyflop

| Apr 19, 2016

Funny, exhausting, polemical and poetic, it is a joyous assertion of Gomes' belief that storytelling serves as an escape from reality, and a way to confront and transcend even the most difficult of times.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 18, 2016

Fascinating even in its misfires, this [is a] sprawling and fantastical document of the country's plight in the wake of the global financial crisis.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 22, 2016

For the patient, 'Arabian Nights' is a marvel. It pushes filmmaking into a new realm of the senses, to a place where it is okay to become sleepy. You know a new jolt will come.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 21, 2016

An undeniably strange experience, and an oddly valuable one.

| Feb 18, 2016