28, 29, 30… Ready or not, here I come! Children play hide-and-seek in the Monastery of Sancti Spiritus, but gradually, we witness the players transform into people who were alive seven centuries ago. One of the initiators of this historical game offers a hint: in the early 14th century, the Portuguese monarchy faced a dynastic crisis — with no male heir, the throne was set to pass to Beatrice. She was crowned head of state at the age of just ten, and today, the children swept up in their game honour a child who had to grow up too soon.

This short film is one of the most original recent examples of historical exploration and reconstruction, in which Portuguese director Gonçalves combines playfulness with research and the subjective with the factual. The short film was shot in the Toro Monastery, where Beatrice’s tomb is located, and a little-known chapter of the nation’s history is transformed into a laboratory of imagination, with young actors reconstructing the past. The phenomenon of the child’s gaze, so often encountered in cinema, is complemented here by performativity, which lends a childlike wisdom to Gonçalves’ work as it evokes a lost time. The film was shown as part of the Rotterdam International Film Festival’s Tiger Short Competition.