The Tsugua Diaries

This is a lyrical ode to the glories of summer and the collaborative joys of filmmaking, suffused with the hope that we will never be deprived of either for long.

The directors, Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes, rely on some tricky devices to tell the story of this film shoot—but those tricks, far from undercutting the emotional drama, intensify it. The result is the most accomplished and absorbing film about time spent in lockdown that I’ve seen.

A work that possesses both the whimsy and fearlessness of a student project and the technical vibrancy of a veteran’s opus.

The Tsugua Diaries has something of a chiasmus structure, with each half of the movie, each layer of reality, and each direction of time doubling back on and rhyming with itself.

Whether wholly performed or partially authentic, The Tsugua Diaries wittily evokes the volatile mood swings of lockdown — how concentrated time with the same people can yield either irritation or intensified closeness from day to day, particularly in a sticky-hot summer haze.

The Tsugua Diaries is something like Memento for an age of isolation and listlessness.