Camilo De Sousa

Two boys with different experiences and goals meet up in a sprawling African market. One is looking for a job, to get back what was stolen from him and return home. The other will do anything to avoid having to go back with his family. They become friends and together they reinvent the world.

This documentary presents video footages from President Samora Machel's discourses and from his interactions with Mozambican people; includes narration in Portuguese that discuss Mozambique social conditions and developments after independence from Portuguese colonial administration was obtained.

Mueda was a massacre. The name is that of the village in Northern Mozambique where in 1960 it took place. The Portuguese colonial regime did the killing. In independent Mozambique, those inhabitants of Mueda who survived regularly re-enact the massacre in situ. They themselves play the roles of victims, assassins, and spectators. Ruy Guerra, now a Brazilian but born in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo, the capital of Mozambique), filmed this extraordinary creation of liberated popular culture, intercutting it with first-hand interviews on the massacre. The mix is compelling, and the grave yet joyous spectacle unique.

In the early 70s, Camilo de Sousa left Lourenço Marques, Mozambique, travelled Europe, joined the Frelimo guerrilla and became a filmmaker. Now living in Portugal, he returns to Mozambique to be reunited with two former comrades in arms. With Aleixo Caindi and Julião Papalo, he recalls ancient times, when the joy of liberation made way for dark times and the quest for a ‘new man’ destroyed a country’s dreams and illusions.