Paul Le Grouyer, Bruno Lorvão, and producer Fatma Tarhouni present their documentary “Portugal ’74” at the Saraqusta Film Festival 2025, an untold story about the Carnation Revolution told with the pace of a historical thriller. The filmmakers share the keys to their audiovisual archaeological work, the challenges they faced in their search for archives and unpublished testimonies, and reflect on the essential role of festivals in the dissemination of documentary cinema.
How does it feel to be participating in the Saraqusta Festival, and is this your first time here?
Paul Le Grouyer:
Well, I really like this city because I came here five years ago and went home with a dragon (the Saraqusta Festival trophy), and I was pretty happy. It was a film about the Spanish flu that won the award five years ago. It’s still a great memory, and I hope we can repeat that feat.
Fatma Tarhouni:
I’ve had three films selected here: one on the Spanish flu that I produced, Malcolm X last year, which was selected but didn’t win the prize, and now it’s the third year and my first time here.
Bruno Lorvão:
I’m happy. I’ve been here as a tourist, but this is my first time at the festival. Yes, I’m happy to be able to talk about this story to the Spanish public and to be able to pass it on.
In your opinion, what is the role of a festival like this in promoting documentaries?
Bruno Lorvão:
There’s a lot to say. When I was younger, I worked for this kind of festival when I lived in Toulouse, and it’s a pioneering role. It’s what keeps people like us going and it’s what our work is all about, because we’re in contact with audiences, with people who love and appreciate what we do. Whereas showing films on television creates a certain distance from the audience, here we’re out in the field.
Fatma Tarhouni:
Festivals like this also give films a new lease of life. Once they’ve been shown on television, films no longer exist, so to speak, but thanks to this festival and others, they can continue to circulate and reach a wider audience, which is very important for us as producers and directors.
Paul Le Grouyer:
It also allows us to create events around the films and for the teams who make these films to meet other people, people who may even be affected by the story in question. I know that I have often worked for months in an editing room with just film material, and then at festivals I meet people who have lived through that story, and suddenly something truly magical happens.
Another interesting thing is that we have films that are very visible in France and we have a good system that allows for large-scale production. Not all films are that lucky. Festivals also shine a spotlight on low-budget films, films that directors or writers have spent years trying to get off the ground. Thanks to festivals, they finally get the visibility they don’t get on television or elsewhere.
What motivated you to make the documentary “Portugal 74” about the Carnation Revolution?
Bruno Lorvão:
It’s a personal story. As a Portuguese person, it comes naturally to me to want to tell this story. First of all, for the French public and for the Portuguese community in France, to pass on this story and for them to take ownership of it too. French production allows this kind of film to exist.
Paul Le Grouyer:
Let’s say that a revolution that starts well and ends well is unique. Usually there is a lot of drama involved in overthrowing a dictatorship, but the Portuguese did it peacefully with an organized army, people who thought things through and wanted to overthrow the dictatorship without settling scores in blood. That’s what fascinated me about this story. We managed to build something over time. It took a long time, but we can see that today this revolution is still alive in Portuguese history because today’s history has been built around a revolution that took place 50 years ago, and I find that fascinating. I’m not Portuguese, but I know Portuguese people, I have a kind of adoptive family in Portugal, and April 25 is in every conversation, not every day, but often in conversations.
Fatma Tarhouni:
For me, it’s important to have this documentary because it’s a film that gives hope, in any case. I’m repeating what my colleagues have said, but it was a peaceful revolution, with the military giving power back to the people. That’s unprecedented, it’s never been seen before, and it’s obvious that this kind of story needs to be told.
Paul Le Grouyer:
I might add that, by chance, a year ago I was working on the coup in Chile that took place in September 1973, where the military overthrew a democracy and seized power to install a dictatorship that lasted 20 years. Then, six months later in Portugal, the opposite happened. I find it really fascinating that, in the space of just over six months, history turned itself upside down.
How did you work together as co-directors and producer? Did you each have a specific role?
Fatma Tarhouni:
As a producer, I had already worked with Paul and Bruno on other projects, and for me it went very well. It was a wonderful adventure.
Bruno Lorvão:
Film production involves many roles, and we try to get the best out of everyone to make the best film possible. We each have our specialities and strengths, which complement each other and enable us to make the best film possible. That’s the result we’ve achieved here.
Paul Le Grouyer:
To put it simply, when I joined the collaboration, I didn’t speak Portuguese and Bruno spoke it perfectly, so he took care of listening to all the testimonies and poring over the letters. He tried to understand the radio dialogues that were exchanged between the soldiers on April 25, but not everything was very clear. You have to understand that all the elements we put in the film were scattered everywhere. We had to piece everything together day after day, hour after hour. Bruno was in charge of collecting all the audio content, while I collected all the visual content. The
important thing to know is that April 25 was filmed by an amateur filmmaker with his little Super 8 camera, starting in the morning. He was in the square when the first rebel tanks arrived. It turns out that the reel he shot was film at the time. The reel was cut into small pieces and scattered everywhere, and we obviously had to piece it back together to recreate April 25 with as many images as we could recover. So I would say that we divided the work between audio and visuals.
Bruno Lorvão:
I would add that the work of a documentary filmmaker, producer, director, and writer is to popularize, but at times, as was the case with this film and the previous one we did with Fatma on Salazar, we also do archival research. That is, we put the archives in order, which allows for a better understanding of the event. And what Paul is saying is that we’ve done something that Portugal hasn’t done yet, which is to organize the audiovisual archives, and in that sense, the film is unique, and this timeline, which we’ve cleaned up, has never been done before. Not even by historians.
Paul Le Grouyer:
This timeline of April 25th puts the audio documents, films, and photos in order, because that day was photographed by many people, and we were the first to put them in order, bring them together in a single document, and I hope that this work will inspire the Portuguese archives to redo this collection and reference it.
What challenges did you encounter in your search for archives and testimonies?
Fatma Tarhouni:
There were very complicated deadlines with the Portuguese film library, because we called on Portuguese archive sources that are not used to using this material to make films, as we are in France, so that was a bit stressful. Getting the images on time, obtaining these images even for editing, and then I’ll let my colleagues talk about the discovery of the letters of Saint Fatima, which brought something else, another depth to the film. Something that embodies the Portuguese people, and that was a discovery along the way.
Bruno Lorvão:
While leafing through Portuguese newspapers, we realized that there was a holy place in Portugal called Fatima, a place where people go to confide in someone, and during that period many mothers, sisters, and brothers confided in Fatima about their parents who were at war and at risk of losing their lives, who were struggling in the war. We gathered lots of testimonies and were able to connect the small stories to the big story. That’s what’s important. We often think that historical films are just about big characters like Churchill and Napoleon, but in fact, it’s the people who enable Churchill, Napoleon, and Salazar to live or not, who determine the fate of these people, depending on whether they decide to follow them or not. In Fatima’s testimonies, you can feel that the dictatorship is crumbling, that even the most modest women are starting to complain and say, “No, this can’t go on.” And the film went out and collected these testimonies. We managed to piece them together and insert them into the larger narrative.
Fatma Tarhouni:
And especially since at that time no one had the right to speak, people were afraid, and that’s why these testimonies were so powerful, because the voices of the Portuguese were not represented anywhere in the archives except for this discovery, where they could speak freely because the state wasn’t going to search the letters written by families.
Paul Le Grouyer:
One of the difficulties we have in these films is that the images we use are never the ones you see at the end because these images have a copyright, so we can’t just take them for free on the internet and use them as we please. So when we make a film like this, we first make a mock-up with temporary elements that have codes on the images, so it’s quite a thankless task. Once we’re sure of our editing, we order the images, and that’s when problems can arise. When we use international archives that are used to this type of process, we get the images in high definition within a short time, around 10 to 15 days. With the Portuguese images, it was much more complicated because they weren’t used to this type of method, so we had a bit of a scare because the images weren’t arriving even though we had planned ahead. We work with two archivists who are responsible for the search interface and access to these images. So we had one in Portugal who was in charge of the two Portuguese archives, RTP and another who was in charge of all the other archives. Thanks to them, we managed to get everything we wanted for the film on time. I would also like to pay tribute to them today because it is Margarida and Anaïs, the two people who made this film possible. Without them, we would not have had any images.
The film is presented as a “historical thriller.” Why did you make this narrative choice?
Bruno Lorvão:
We made this choice because there is tension in the story and it was lived with tension. They risked their lives. The regime could not fall on that day, when there had already been a first coup attempt a few weeks or months earlier, which had failed. So there is the tension of a thriller. The story is told like a thriller with a happy ending.
Paul Le Grouyer:
It’s true that we chose to tell the story in the present tense. We tell the story with tension, trying not to reveal the ending, even though we know it, but trying to experience it day by day, in the uncertainty of the Portuguese people who didn’t know if the revolution would succeed. Indeed, on the morning of April 25, who could have believed that by that evening, the dictator would be leaving in an armored car to the jeers of the crowd? No one knew. So we try to stay in that atmosphere, in that feeling, so that the viewer still feels suspense.
In which countries has the film already been shown? And how was it received by audiences in each country?
Fatma Tarhouni:
I don’t remember the list of countries that bought the film, but there are many. In the Middle East, I think there’s Saudi Arabia and Sharjah. Unfortunately, we don’t have any feedback on these screenings. That said, we sold it in Spain and Portugal. I can’t tell you exactly, but we did sell it to a few European countries. It was also shown in Canada.
Paul Le Grouyer:
I can tell you that in Canada, it was seen by the Portuguese community. It was shown on Radio Canada. I got some feedback because I know people there. They were impressed by the film. It seems far away to them, but at the same time, it’s also very close. Seeing a piece of Portugal shown in Canada is also rare. It got very positive feedback there.
What are your future projects in the field of historical documentaries?
Fatma Tarhouni:
I am a producer of historical documentary films. I am currently working for Arte on a two 52-minute project on the Nehru-Gandhi succession, the history of modern India through the history of this family. Very interesting.
Paul Le Grouyer:
We also made a film that Fatma produced and I directed last year, which will be broadcast on France Télévisions on June 3. It’s about the history of submarines during World War II. It’s called U-Boot, la menace fantôme (U-Boat, the Phantom Menace). How submarines spread terror across the oceans for several months. And then, on May 28, France Télé will broadcast a film about the history of the STO, the Compulsory Work Service. These were young people who were sent to work in Germany during World War II by the French government. It’s a film that looks back at the youth of this story and, in a way, breaks down some of the preconceived ideas we might have about these events.
Why did you get started in the film industry?
Fatma Tarhouni:
I started out of passion, out of a love for it. I thought it was a very important medium for reaching people. It’s a great medium because it allows you to convey ideas and images. That’s what motivated me. I also wanted to convey a message of peace. That’s what I wanted to do.
Bruno Lorvão:
I first wanted to make documentaries when I helped organize a film festival in Toulouse. There, I met directors and other people working in the industry. I deeply believe in the educational power of documentaries, whether they are about society or history. All documentaries are there to bear witness to the past or the present. Even if it’s not the most powerful genre in audiovisual media compared to fiction or series, it’s an essential genre.
Paul Le Grouyer:
I’ve always wanted to work in audiovisual media since I was your age. But when I was 20, I had absolutely no idea that I was going to make documentaries. I used to repair VCRs at one point. I was a camera operator for about ten years. I did a lot of editing after that. And then at some point it became obvious that I wanted to tell stories, and it just happened naturally. It took 30 years. It’s been a long journey, but I have a deep desire to share images and tell stories. I hope to do this for as long as possible.
