Eudósia, a young Spanish teacher, flees the civil war and finds refuge in the village of Castro Laboreiro. Between Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and France, she crosses borders, weaving a legacy of resilience and freedom. Narrated by her children, Paul and Yvonne, this story follows the dividing lines where conflict and connection arise between generations and cultures.
Silvana Torricella, Diogo Silvestre, and Norberto Valente form a team that met in 2020 during their Master's in Audiovisual Communication with a specialization in production and directing at ESMAD. After completing their studies, they continued to collaborate on various audiovisual projects. Although their experiences are primarily focused on fiction, they have come together for the first time to create a documentary that uses the border between countries as a backdrop to explore what separates and unites generations and cultures.
In a village in Melgaço, Adelino Fernandes, better known as Aires, spends his days working in his "little" workshop at home. Retired and 87 years old, he dedicates himself to fixing the most diverse objects at the request of his neighbours, for whom he has a great deal of affection, and asks for nothing in return. A poetic portrait of a man who contributes to his community and in return life smiles back at him.
They met at Lusófona University. Lara and Mafalda were finishing their degrees in Cinema and Afonso was finishing his degree in Sound. They were already friends and partners in various projects, Lara as a director and producer and Mafalda as a camera operator. They started working with Afonso, the sound director, in 2022 and quickly realized the synergy and compatibility in the work they shared. That's when the MDOC film residency came about. The end result was a memorable and beautiful experience that they will remember for a lifetime.
In a campsite in Melgaço, far from the suffocating city life, a serene setting emerges, surrounding the symbiosis between humans and nature. The viewer is invited to feel the fleeting moments captured in a constantly changing space, leaving behind the timeless traces of human experience. Objects, people, and spaces interconnected in a hypothetical concept, in a glimpse into the past and the present.
Narcisa, Filipa, and Ariana met at UBI, in the Cinema course, in 2020, where they collaborated on the final project "À Margem da Linha," thus fostering a great friendship and future artistic collaborations. Narcisa is finishing the Directing course at ETIC, in Lisbon, and is looking to pursue an internship in the field of Directing. Filipa is currently doing an internship at the Portuguese production company Sagesse Productions, in the Production field. Ariana hasn’t been able to work in this field yet and aspires to leave the country to pursue her artistic ambitions.
Dark, dense, silent night. Premonitions. Memories from this world and another. In the village of Ribeiro de Baixo, our daily lives intersect with stories and signs beyond the picturesque Minho region. We look attentively at the Galician mountain on the other side of the river. This border, through which everyone observes with binoculars, is crossed between life and death. What are we searching for? The hunting wolf? The solitary wanderer? The lights of ghostly apparitions? How much attention do we give to an hesitant future? We wait, we disappear.
Nuno, Rodrigo, and Vítor met in a free film course in Porto. None of them work in the film industry, but they are all fascinated by the narrative and poetic possibilities of the moving image. Combining friendship with common interests in nature and the authenticity of a transgenic country, they decided to head to Melgaço for their first documentary experience together.
