Azevedo Gomes launched her directorial career with a remarkable film forging the bond between cinema and literature that would continue throughout her entire career. More than just the portrait of an artist, The Sound of the Shaking Earth immerses the viewer so deeply in the restless mind of its protagonist, a self-doubting novelist, that it become richly uncertain what and who is imagined and real. The central role of the unstable writer is played by the great singer, activist and actor in key independent art films of the 1990s and early 2000s, José Mário Branco, with Cinemateca Portuguesa head João Bénard da Costa appearing in an indelible scene late in the film pontificating brilliantly on chance and/as destiny. Although The Sound of the Shaking Earth was initially met with disapproval in Portugal, colored by polarized debates about government support for non-commercial cinema, recent years and a new digital restoration have seen it heralded as an innovative and overlooked classic.