Hugo dos Santos | Portugal, 2022, 95'
In the 1970s, a house in Paris hosted dozens of Portuguese deserters draft dodging from the colonial war. Only the archives of the Portuguese political police kept the traces evidence of their anti-colonialist activities. From one character to another, gathering testimonials and amateur images, this clandestine memory is reconstructed.
Hugo Dos Santos graduated in Contemporary History and Cinema. After a career in documentary cinema where he collaborated with directors such as João Canijo, João Trabulo, Jean-Luc Bouvret or the historian Pascal Blanchard, he also turned to journalism. He successively joined France 24, Courrier International and RFI where he dealt in particular with Portuguese-speaking news. Since 2008, he has been involved in the association Mémoire vive /Memória viva, which collects and transmits the memory of Portuguese immigration to France. In 2019 he curated the exhibition Refuser la guerre coloniale, which reports on the Parisian exile of Portuguese deserters from the colonial war. Les Mains Invisibles is his first feature film.
