Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One

Roll on Volume Two.

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.

Gomes's Arabian Nights exerts its own strange allure.

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.