After the success of Tabu in 2012, director Miguel Gomes planned to shoot his next film in Mexico. However, due to a sudden economic crisis, he had to cancel the project. Witnessing the rapid political and economic changes in Portuguese society in the face of the crisis, Gomes decided to make a portrait of what was happening in his own country. For about a year and a half, he collected local news and interviewed people to create stories based on reality. He borrowed the structure of Arabian Nights, the collection of tales where Queen Scheherazade must tell stories every night not to die, to organize his narratives. The first part of Gomes’ masterpiece trilogy, Arabian Nights, uses the original narrative structure itself as a metaphor for the present, setting the direction for the entire trilogy and gradually revealing clues to understand the film. (JO Ji-hoon)