Anything And All

Dídio Pestana's free-ranging film is a collection of memories caught on Super 8 between 2010 and 2018. The film's direct translation - About everything, About Nothing - would be more fitting, as this is as much about the consideration of inconsequential moments in a life as milestones.

Stretching from his homeland of Portugal to his adopted city of Berlin and well beyond, it is imbued with a sense of wistfulness as he considers everything from his grief over the death of his father to a succession of romantic liaisons in Germany. The grainy nature of the Super 8 film gives the film the texture of events half-remembered - a summer bike ride, waves lapping or fireworks at New Year. Also interesting, is the intrusion of sound, with the chime of bells seeming to waft in as though from another era.

Pestana is brave, both unafraid of filming moments of intimacy when others might have set the camera aside - and of then presenting those moments to us in retrospect. While the film captures the nature of longing and gives a sense of what it means for people to feel "in transit", it suffers from wandering itself in places, drifting when it would be served by a stronger edit. But although his very personal connection to the material leads to some over-indulgence, it is precisely this intimate relationship between director and footage that makes the film worth seeing.