The Ornithologist

A lone scientist in Portugal’s Douro region embarks on an unexpected transcendental journey. Beautiful, erotic and baffling.

Fernando is an ornithologist on a research trip in Portugal’s Douro region. After a kayaking disaster leaves him for dead, the lone scientist is rescued by two Chinese women on a trek to Santiago de Compostela. However, nothing is quite what is seems and so begins one man’s spiritual and metaphysical journey through the sprawling, often psychedelic woodlands.

Like a queer companion piece to Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent, João Pedro Rodrigues’ pastoral meditation on landscape, ethnography and personal transcendence is a visually ravishing, profoundly hypnotic experience. But it’s also a strikingly subversive piece of work from a director with a reputation for defiant risk-taking, delighting and perplexing with its unpredictable narrative and fertile symbolism.