The Portuguese screenwriter brings his popular radio series to the big screen, combining bizarre true stories, humour and cinematic influences in a film set to premiere in 2027.
After five weeks of filming, the production of "The Man Who Bit the Dog: The Movie" set up shop on one of the platforms at Santa Apolónia train station in Lisbon to film the final scenes, or, as Nuno Markl told the Lusa news agency, "the grand climax."
Radio stories brought to life
For the finale, they reserved the true story that happened a few years ago in the north of the country, when a group of young people, travelling by train to the Paredes de Coura festival, noticed a lady hanging and clinging to the outside of the moving carriage. In the film, actress Ana Bustorff will play the old lady who clung to the carriage.
The bizarre story was narrated in one of the hundreds of episodes of the radio series "The Man Who Bit the Dog," on Rádio Comercial, and is recalled by Nuno Markl while the production team prepares the set to film it.
"I would say it will be the great climax of the film" and one of the most ambitious scenes in the production of Nuno Markl's first foray into directing, which had been in preparation for three years and which the author insisted on maintaining, even after suffering two strokes in 2025.
The screenwriter explains that this health problem, which left him with motor disabilities, and the recovery process "served as mortar" to bind together in the script all the bizarre stories he gathered from the radio section he started in 1997.
“I tried to combine the best and most recent things. Some timeless classics, like, for example, the story of the lady who tried to hatch an egg between her breasts, which I managed to fit in here amidst all this madness,” she said with a laugh.
Star-studded Portuguese cast
The film, which is scheduled to premiere in 2027, features a large cast of actors and friends of the screenwriter, including Gonçalo Waddington, Gabriela Barros, Bruno Nogueira, Ricardo Araújo Pereira, Isabel Abreu, Anabela Moreira, Daniela Melchior, Rui Melo (who is also the actors' director), Salvador Martinha, José Raposo, and Rui Mendes.
A lifelong passion for cinema
On set in Santa Apolónia, Nuno Markl waits in a production tent, where actor Rui Melo is also present. Together they view images from previous filming and rehearsals of today's shots on a monitor, commenting that they have "a scene à la 'Inception'," a film by director Christopher Nolan, or "one of those Scorsese-esque tracking shots."
“I’ve been tinkering with all my references from many more years of watching films (…), I drew many storyboards, some of them at home, others here on set, I talked a lot with the director of photography about whether I could do this or that, and it was a very happy experience,” he admitted to the Lusa news agency.
With over a million followers on social media, Nuno Markl has been sharing his enthusiasm for the film's production daily and revealing many of its cinematic and popular inspirations: Nanni Moretti, Roy Scheider, Victor Fleming, and Martin Scorsese are all present.
Finding humour and hope through filmmaking
At 55 years old, and with physical after-effects from strokes, Nuno Markl acknowledges that "the whole country needs more support for people with disabilities and needs more accessibility."
Regarding his experience in filmmaking, he recalled the technical team who always made sure "that I didn't fall."
"It has been good for my health to do this and maintain it from the beginning. I've been trying to see the sense of humour in everything, and I think that helps a lot in maintaining a certain hope, so I think it's possible," she considered.
Nuno Markl, born in Lisbon in 1971, is one of Portugal's best-known comedy writers, author of the radio segments "Caderneta de Cromos" and "O Homem Que Mordeu O Cão," which have been adapted into books. He worked at Produções Fictícias, where he wrote for Herman José and presented several television programs, the most recent of which was "Taskmaster."
He wrote the screenplay for the film "Refrigerantes e Canções de Amor" (2016), by Luís Galvão Teles, and is the author of the television series "1986" (2018).