Schroeter’s crepuscular final film was shot in the port city of Porto while he was succumbing to the effects of cancer, the disease that had afflicted his whole family. Departing from Juan Carlos Onetti’s novel Para esta noche, and worked on exclusively at night, Nuit de Chien (This Night) is a fugue-like exploration of the shadows of history and despair, and hope in spite of it.

In the final words of his autobiography he writes that “The history of the mistakes and crimes of the church is a catastrophe, and the film rejects it as betrayal. In full awareness of disaster, despite torture, viciousness, and intrigues, our longing for a possible community, a credible Utopis, is overwhelming. This hopelessness and hopeless hope is my own conviction. I am a hopeful man.” 

Screening on 35mm courtesy of Paulo Branco and Alfama Films.