Os Fillos da Vide (The sons of the Vine)


At this point it is quite a challenge to make a totally independent film where oenology and ethnography go hand in hand. "Os fillos da Vide" has been done in nine years, without haste; as the way great wines are made. The director Ana Domínguez  from "A Rua", a town in the Galician region of Valdeorras, takes us to her personal world, to her life experience through a trip through the four seasons with the vineyard as the guiding thread.

Despite being a feature film with a more ethnographic character than wine itself, the film is a reference in a land like Spain, the world's leading producer of wine, but where there is hardly any filmograpihc tradiction that refers to viticulture.




The succession of the seasons in the vineyard, the references to the train, the celebrations around the harvest, are in fact a vital metaphor, and constitute a cinematographic argument well solved by its author. Clear references also to the magical realism, reflected by those landscapes between mists, those mysterious mountains, and even with the appearance of the same god Bacchus and his entourage of Bacchae. Very curious the scene that alludes to the appearance of a Roman stone under a Christian altar in a church of the region, dedicated to the same Bacchus. And it is that the celebrations around the harvest, have here a markedly bacchic character, as shown in "a Festa das Covas" in the town of VilaMartín de Valdeorras.

People drinking in "cuncas"
Piper playing in a Festa das Covas








Interesting approach to the world of winemaking from a personal perspective, where there is no lack of references to artisanal viticulture, as it was done in the past, to the love for the vineyard and wine, the attachment to traditions that are increasingly forgotten, in an adhered land to the wine as it is that of the zone of A Rua in the region of Valdeorras (Ourense, Galicia, Spain), but that could be any other.
Vine in Fall

Among the many documents that the movie unveils, just to mention a memorable phrase pronounced by the old winegrower Antonio in his own language, Galician, "Neste viñedo hai viñas moi antigas próximas aos cen anos e viñas máis novas de vinte ou trinta anos. E, como os seres humanos, canto máis vellos son, menos dan, pero o que dan é de mellor calidade ". "In this vineyard there are very old vines that are about one hundred years old, and younger vines of twenty or thirty years old. And, as the same as human beings, the older they are, the less they give, but what they give is of better quality. "
Vineyards in Fall

We will not reveal yet the origin of the title, "Os fillos da Vide", we leave it for the viewer to find out by watching the movie.

The Director Ana Domínguez.


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