After the oficial screening of The Domain in the Venice Film Festival, with a standing ovation that lasted for long minutes, the international press started to release first impressions.

"An epic candidate for the Golden Lion: the director Tiago Guedes shows in Venice the decline of a Portuguese dynasty, led by men. [...] [Albano] Jerónimo's focused acting shines among the arrogance of [Marlon] Brando and the brutal contention of Alain Delon. [...] It's a revelation." Andreas Borcholte, Der Spiegel

"Running as deep and slow as the Tagus [...] Tiago Guedes’s The Domain is an almost three-hour-long Portuguese family saga that builds through dramatic peaks and troughs to a remarkable portrait of a patriarchal fiefdom gradually being eaten away from both outside and in. [...]Guedes’ film builds authority and power, thanks also to Albano Jeronimo’s magnetic presence as a handsome, disdainful estate owner with a superiority complex but also a fierce attachment to his land. [...] it’s exactly this domineering male myth that the film will gradually pull apart. It does so partly through The Domain’s other standout performance, that of Sandra Faleiro as Joao’s wife Leonor. Guedes’ direction is measured and controlled throughout, and technical contributions are impressive in everything from Roberto Perpignani’s slow, rhythmic edit to the film’s costumes and lighting – the latter brilliantly in evidence in a sequence near the end in which Joao retreats further and further into the shadows to become a black silhouette outlined by the first light of dawn." Lee Marshall, Screen International (4 stars)