The Sound of the Shaking Earth

Freely based on Gide ('Paludes') and Hawthorne ('Wakefield'), this is a film about a writer who never wrote anything and who blows at nightfall the breath of frost. The poem by Carlos Queiroz to which the above sentences belong is not cited in 'O som da Terra a Tremer', but the atmosphere is that, between written letters never received. Fiction within fiction, stories within stories, like those Chinese boxes in which there is always one inside another. Or the two margins of the same river, always being lateral.

Directed by Rita Azevedo Gomes, The Sound of the Shaking Earth leans on a strong ensemble — José Mário Branco, Manuela de Freitas, Miguel Gonçalves Mendes — to carry a story that balances spectacle with character.

The film landed with audiences for its craft and performances, and remains one of the most talked-about drama titles of 1990.