Like any industrious coastal town or city, Rio de Janeiro's port region has always been a hub for the confluence of cultures, nationalities and identities. Since 2013, it has also formed the basis of a research project for filmmaker Julia De Simone. Her third feature-length film – which was supported by IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund in 2014 – shifts away from straightforward documentary and towards a more fictionalised form as it presents the story of Muanza, a woman born in the Kingdom of Kongo in the early nineteenth century and trafficked to Brazil, who awakens to find herself in the present, roaming the streets of Rio’s rapidly changing port region, known as ‘Pequena Africa’, or Little Africa.
Obsessed with questions about his past, a bankrupt, white Brazilian filmmaker undertakes an epic journey from Brazil to Mozambique and Portugal. This melancholic fable mixes animation, live-action, voice-overs, genres, and continents to explore Brazil's colonial past.
Elsie wakes Löic from a hidden grave in the forest. He does not remember anything, just what they are: vampires. With his memory slowly returning, Elsie fears that the love she feels for Loïc may not be enough to keep him by her side.
Duarte, a blind man in his 50’s, starts to look for his Cape Verdean friend, Leandro, who mysteriously disappeared. Despite Lisbon’s summer heat, Duarte walks miles in his neighbourhood but no one seems to have seen him, nor remembers him. His quest will eventually lead him to the heart of the night and reveal his secret.
