Fuck the Polis In Rita Azevedo Gomes’ cinematic universe, a characteristic blend of literary adaptation and cinematic innovation creates simultaneously concrete and oneiric landscapes—places where the wandering subject, camera, plot and spectator become absorbed by the unknown, yet strangely familiar, territory before them. With Fuck the Polis, her most bold and daring film to date, the Portuguese filmmaker continues her cinematographic explorations of word, image, time and human emotions.
Making its world premiere at FIDMarseille 2025, Polis follows Irma, who around twenty years ago, believing herself condemned, traveled to Greece. She now retraces that journey, moving from island to island in what becomes both a physical and metaphysical odyssey through urban dreamscapes where western history and culture engages in a complex dialogue with literature and poetry—a terrain in which Gomes appropriates and creates a Greece that exists somewhere between documentary reality and poetic reverie.
I sat down with Gomes to discuss this latest work and her unique approach to cinema that transforms the familiar into the mysterious, the concrete into the dreamlike.
Filmmaker: There’s something fascinating about the intermediality in Fuck the Polis. This film draws from João Miguel Fernandes Jorge’s poetry collection Fuck the Polis. I was looking at his poetry—
Gomes: Did you notice he doesn’t use adjectives?
Filmmaker: Now that you mention it…But what I found particularly intriguing is that you worked on the editorial design of his other poetry books that were based on the work of Ozu, Dreyer, and Bresson and published by the Cinemateca Portuguesa. Now you’re doing the reverse—instead of transforming poetry inspired by cinema, going from poetry to film.
Gomes: Yes, that’s true. I worked on those editions at the Cinemateca Portuguese. We made these nice editions with careful design and photographs. But you know, this intermediality—it’s not something that I think much about consciously. Things just come naturally when you’re working on a film. This particular film was very wild in the sense that you don’t know what you’re going to get when you start filming. You read a lot of things, you start reading poetry about Greece and suddenly some poems just fit.
I was aware that Greece has been, throughout the centuries, something like our origin—the occidental thing, art, theater and all that. But through the ages, the image, the feeling, the understanding of Greece have also changed a lot. We have the romantic period looking at it in one way, then more realistic approaches where poets start talking differently. There are lots of different interpretations of Greek soil, Greek origins, and it’s not steady—it’s not like a fact. I think Greek culture has lots of things we don’t know yet, that we cannot still explain, but we are very worried about keeping them and selling them and making museums. The Parthenon is still a mystery, still a big enigma, but they appropriate it and feel the need to state things as if they were facts, and it’s not that. They’re destroying it because they want to sell tickets to museums. That’s why I put the poems of Byron in to contrast. It was a kind of dialogue, and I didn’t want to explain more. I just put the poems, and each one can make their own interpretation.
Filmmaker: Formally speaking, as a viewer, you question yourself while watching: am I watching a poem, a collage, a map or someone drifting? The form itself becomes enigmatic.
Gomes: You’re right, it’s like drifting, totally, floating like the islands. I always had in my mind—I didn’t put this in the film because it would be too didactic—the initial dance of Geranos, where [the dancers] make this spiral going to the center and then come back. It’s very interesting. The legend says that in this dance, when they go into the center, they are going into the underworld, and when they uncurl and open, they come back to this world. I thought this was the kind of movement of our journey—going in and then coming back. But I took out all the explanations, all the answers. I like it better without explaining. It happened in several parts of the film—I don’t need to explain why, because it’s better that you leave it free. If you want to know, you go and Google it.
Filmmaker: How did you approach the structure of this film? Did you work with a traditional script?
Gomes: I didn’t exactly have a script. I had a very small dossier where I collected texts, ideas and materials that I could use. I also had another dossier with lots of things that could go in the film. The film was made step by step during shooting. I had this previous idea and collected lots of materials, but I didn’t know what I was going to find. We knew the itinerary, though we could change it. I wanted to revisit the places where I had been in 2007—that was the start of this film. Since 2007, I was thinking that one day I would like to make a film about this extraordinary journey and all the things that happened to me, but I didn’t know how. For me, it’s horrible to do something about your own story. During editing, I was suffering a lot—I could not stand myself, could not listen to my voice. I wanted to throw everything in the garbage.
Each night during the shooting, I was planning the next day. For instance, on the second day of our journey, I broke my foot and couldn’t walk. I had already had the idea to use João Miguel’s text, so I took the text and started reading it. When I read it, I’m stumbling, I’m not the perfect reader, but I think there’s something true there. You can feel that I’m connected with the texts. I was inventing each day for the next day. It’s really like a mosaic, but with this feeling that maybe we, the occidental civilization, misunderstood something there—the idea of “Polis.” Look where we are now, the result today, this idea of hierarchy. That’s why the texts of Camus [“Helen’s Exile” and “Summer”] were so important to me. I think he explains that very well.
Filmmaker: So the film avoids interpretation in a way, like João Miguel’s poetry avoids adjectives—both refuse to give easy answers.
Gomes: Maybe you could say that. I could add explanations, didactic things to the film: for instance, explaining that Delos, this absolutely magic island where we’ve been, is going to drown in 50 years, it’s going to be under the sea. But that’s the paradox. Can you imagine an island like that, one of the most important centers after the classical period? No one has been buried there and no one has been born there, because of mythology. The mythology of Leto, I love this story. These kinds of stories were in my head. But do I need to tell these stories in the film? It’s very tempting because they’re wonderful, but I decided not to make one of those documentary voiceovers with explanations.
Filmmaker: Can you tell us about the original trip to Greece that inspired this film?
Gomes: I had a very serious health problem, and they were telling me at the hospital that I had to go through a very harsh treatment of maybe several months. They said “Let’s see what happens, because maybe this is not going to work.” So, I saw a kind of deadline, but I was feeling perfectly well—I had my energy, I was not in pain at all. It was very strange. I left the hospital and said, “Shit, I’m not going to be able to go to Greece,” because I always wanted to go there since I was 13, when I started studying Greek civilization. I said “Maybe it’s time to go now, otherwise maybe I will never go.” So, I decided to go there all alone for 15 days. It was really extraordinary. I did not die—I’m still here. I came back and started the hard treatment. And it’s curious, because it took some years, that episode and the treatment, and suddenly I was close to finishing A Woman’s Revenge. I said, “Okay, maybe next year I’m not here,” and I would not be able to do the film I’d been trying to do for 16 years. So, I called the producer and told her we had to advance shooting one month. I was in the hospital, weighing 46 kilos, could hardly walk and made the film. I think that was the best thing I did in my life, because when they say “Maybe next year you won’t be here,” then you fight. That fight, even physically, to make that film was very, very hard—sleeping three hours a day and all the crazy things you should not do when you are sick. But it worked in a positive way.
Filmmaker: There’s something very sensorial about how you approach history, your personal one, the one of the place.
Gomes: Yes, exactly. I always have this approach. For example, if I go to a museum, even when completely ignorant, somehow a painting attracts me, calls my attention. I’m fascinated with the thing, and I don’t know what it is. Then I go and see what it is. I never do it the previous way—I don’t get information before. I prefer to be caught by what my emotions capture before my head understands or tries to dig into history. When I went to Greece for the film, I didn’t want any guides pointing me to see this or that, explaining everything. History is very composed, very dependent on interpretation. You see that with Greece through the centuries—history about Greece changes because the interpretation of those times is not a fact. There was something I read once in a book that I like very much: “Effect is already a rule, because effect is an answer, it’s an explanation.” I like to follow things after they touch me, not before.
Filmmaker: You had mentioned books and legends as inspiration, but was any cinema inspiring for you for this work?
Gomes: I used to see lots of films, but now I don’t as much. If you know cinematography too well, it can be restrictive. I don’t normally go and make a film with those references in my pocket. Today—maybe I’m wrong—lots of people do that: “Let’s make something like Ozu,” or “Let’s make something like Bresson.” They don’t find their own expression of their emotion at the moment. Instead of making you more free, it restrains you. The other day, someone was asking me in an interview about trucks, and they were talking about Duras. I haven’t seen Duras’s film [Le Camion]. Even critics try to make immediate connections with other filmmakers.
Filmmaker: Funny because the film reminded me of the work of Straub-Huillet, and also of late Godard, especially with the flowers at the end
Gomes: I always try to be as free as possible from those references. When I’m filming, I don’t try to have a specific shot in my mind from another filmmaker. I tried it once and it was terrible. I tried to do a camera movement that I saw in one of Bresson’s films. I couldn’t do it, and when I tried to make it, it was not bad, but it was not me. So I didn’t use it.
About the flowers, someone was asking if these were Godard’s poppies. I didn’t have either in my mind. I don’t follow the late Godard with the same passion as the early Godard. I think he became too big for himself, making statements with his work like “After me, nothing.” When he made his last films, I feel like he’s telling me “You are lousy. After what I do, there is nothing else to be done in cinema.” I don’t like that. I saw his 3D film in France, and in the end I was saying, “Why did I come to see this?” It was very expensive—cinema tickets there cost so much compared to Portugal. I regretted spending the money. With late Godard, when he talks about cinema being dead, I feel like he’s preventing me from continuing to do cinema. I don’t like that attitude because I want to keep doing cinema. I keep on doing films not to die. It’s good medicine. Even with all the difficulties, the rejections, the financial problems, I continue because I have to. When facing health problems, that urgency becomes even stronger. When they tell you “Maybe next year you won’t be here,” you think differently.
Filmmaker: How do you work with the technical aspects of filmmaking, especially given that this was made with a small crew?
Gomes: I realized that when I’m not filming or approaching something creative, I don’t actually feel alive. I eat, I do the cleaning, I read, I go walking, I go to see movies and exhibitions, but I don’t actually feel alive. I love this kind of production. It’s very familiar, very cozy, very intimate, where everybody does everything and whatever there is to be done. If you can do it, you do it. I made A Woman’s Vengeance the same way. I was not aiming to make the perfect visual film, so I could accept rough footage. Like the shot I made in the van coming from Delos to Athens—I stuck an iPhone on the rearview. Everybody was laughing, saying “You will never use this,” and then I used it. What was more important to me was the emotion that it brought, especially with António Variações’s song [“Quero é viver “]. This singer died very young. He was gay and completely banished by his family—everybody was ashamed of him. In this song, he says “All I want is to live.” For me, that’s what living means. So that shot, with the song and the words he sings, it’s really me. Even if it’s not the best image, even if it’s terrible quality—we made a little color correction, but it’s still garbage. But garbage can be emotional too.
Filmmaker: Your films have some bold risks on the structure, language. You take some risks mixing diverse uses of material—archival, DV images, iPhone shots. As a programmer I see many films nowadays that don’t take any risks, that are so homogeneous, and then I found yours.
Gomes: I was not aiming to make the perfect visual film, so I could accept imperfection. More important than the perfect image is the emotion, the truth of the moment, the connection with what you’re experiencing. That’s what keeps me alive, what keeps me making films.
Filmmaker: And that’s the problem of contemporary cinema. There’s a lack of contact of image and reality, image and emotion.
Gomes: I think we are facing ruins in contemporary cinema. Everything is repeating—it’s all clichés. We’ve gotten to a point where it’s more important, because of contemporary times, to have a trendy theme in the film than the film itself. If it’s a topic that is polemical, that’s what gets attention. But I think that’s not making cinema richer; it’s making it poorer. What interests me is the point of view of who is there. I have to feel the person behind the camera or behind the film. There’s a film that just came out, a huge success. I went to the premiere, and everybody was saying “Finally, we have a genius.” I told them I didn’t like the film. I don’t even remember the film, but it’s a big success. Then there was the Coppola film, Megalopolis, that everybody was telling me I was going to love. I didn’t like it either. The good critics here were giving it five stars, saying “it’s the film of the century.” I feel a bit lonely, as always, being the one saying these things.