Miguel Gomes, winner of Best Director at Cannes, finally brings his war drama ‘Savagery’ to the market with Luxbox (EXCLUSIVE)

Long-Awaited Miguel Gomes’ ‘Savagery’ Heads to Cannes for Pre-Sales

The director who won Best Director at Cannes in 2024, Miguel Gomes, has finally decided to go ahead with his most ambitious work, Savagery (Selvajaria), that was initially announced in 2020. Luxbox, a Paris-based sales agency, will take the film to the market by means of the Cannes Festival next week, where it will be debuting pre-sales.

The film being produced in Brazil’s Northeast is a high-profile project for the Cannes Film Festival, just like The Secret Agent which was held last year. Gomes, who is one of the leading voices in Portuguese-language cinema, is very familiar with the festival since he won the Best Director award for Grand Tour in 2024. His earlier films called Arabian Nights and Tabu, have made his name as an exceptionally daring and visionary filmmaker.

Miguel Gomes’ “Savagery” Initiates Cannes Pre-Sales, Adapting a Major Brazilian Novel

During pre-production, ‘Savagery’ is to be located “in the hostile and surreal environment of Brazil’s Northeast.”

The movie will depict the brutal conflict that occurred in 1896-97 between the residents of the Canudos village, who were led by their prophet, and the army of the young Brazilian Republic.

It is an adaptation of the famous and monumental Rebellion in the Backlands (Os Sertões) by the Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha, a book that many see as both a masterpiece and a symbol of the building of the Brazilian culture.

Besides that, very little is known about the film, for example, whether it centers solely on the last part of Da Cunha’s book, that is, the very violent war between the disciples of the religious leader and visionary Antônio Conselheiro, who was a preacher to the low and the suffering, and the Army of Brazil’s Republic, which had been newly formed in 1889.

Miguel Gomes’ ‘Savagery’ Questions Who the True Savages Are in Brazil’s Most Violent Rebellion

Being quite provocative, the title Savagery fits perfectly. Os Sertões, the much-quoted book by Da Cunha, starts by depicting the sertanejos — the inhabitants of the Northeast exposed to poverty, drought, and hardships — as being backward. The village that Conselheiro led, Canudos, consisted of simple mud houses. When Da Cunha narrates the repression of the rebellion by the Brazilian army, his piece calls the question as to who the real savages are.

Savagery is led by Portugal’s Uma Pedra no Sapato, behind the Grand Tour. It involves Bubbles Project and Matizar Filmes (Brazil), Shellac Sud and Les Films à un Dollar (France), Vivo Film (Italy), Lemming Film (Netherlands), and X Stream Pictures (China) as co-producers.

Producer Filipa Reis on Working With Miguel Gomes: ‘We Will Invent a New Way of Making Films’

“Making films with Miguel Gomes is like beginning a journey. It means that yet again, we will together come up with some completely new way of filmmaking. That we will dare stepping out of our comfort zones- and that after setting the sails, we cannot turn back, ” quoted Filipa Reis, the film’s producer at Uma Pedra no Sapato.

“Only based on a very strong trust can we handle the turbulent seas that Miguel unleashes. Having the confidence, and also the satisfaction, of being part of a completely new thing, one without any precedents, is what it means. And that we are making a film that, half a century from now, people will still be able to find, discover again, and study, ” Reis said. “And yet, it is a very tiring, time-consuming procedure that leads us to think that it is really worth living. Selvajaria will be no exception, believe it!” she ended.

Luxbox and Miguel Gomes Collaborate on ‘Savagery’

“Great that Fiorella Moretti and Luxbox are on board with us. Their presence was so full of energy and participation that we felt completely refreshed, ” Gomes noted.

“We are incredibly excited to be part of Miguel Gomes’s wildly creative new work, Savagery. At Luxbox, Miguel Gomes’s films have been a constant source of inspiration. Fearless and visionary, he is a filmmaker who keeps changing the way cinema works, and it is really an honor for us to work with him on this film, ” Luxbox said. “Savagery explores a deeply moving story of a person’s faith, war, repression, and resistance.”

From ‘Tabu’ to ‘Savagery’: Gomes Continues His Line of Daring and Unconventional Films

Savagery was among the films selected by Locarno Festival for its 2020 Films After Tomorrow, a program compensating the projects that got stopped or complicated because of COVID-19. Its story and the book of Euclides da Cunha also inspired Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel The War of the End of the World, which is considered by many as his masterpiece.

Grand Tour was a Variety Critic’s Pick and the magazine called it “magical and exciting.” “Overflowing with music, dancing, and unexpected encounters between different cultures and time periods, the Portuguese director’s film, which was competing for awards at Cannes, is a soothing remedy for difficult times, ” the review picked up the thread.

Grand Tour was Gomes’ follow-up to the critically acclaimed film trilogy Arabian Nights (2015), which depicted contemporary Portuguese society and received positive reviews from all over the world, and Tabu (2012), which gained him international recognition, winning the Alfred Bauer Prize and the Fipresci Prize at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival.