Time to Gather
Sofia Bairrão / Portugal / 2023 / International Premiere / 97 min
A sunlit and sensuous film from the center of Portugal, where an entire village has been growing cork for generations. An elegant fable about the changing times in an old world.
Somewhere in the centre of Portugal, an entire village lives in harmony with the annual cycle of the cork trees. When the time is right, the cork farmers go out to harvest the cork bark from the trunks of the trees with an experienced and careful touch that has been kept alive for generations by fathers with special axes in their hands, passing on the noble craft to their sons. Strong women gather the cork in stacks and dream of a time when they didn’t have to carry it themselves, but were the cork workers’ cooks, surrounded by birdsong and scorched cork trees with nature as their kitchen. Back in the village, the owner of the plantation tries to sell the cork at ancient prices, while at the same time clashing with his daughter. Sofia Bairrão’s film is a sensuous and beautiful meditation on the Portuguese landscape, which produces more cork than anywhere else in the world.