Films
REGRESSO A NACALA
Brigitte Martinez and Joana Pereira Leite, 2001. 75 min. (RTP – Portugal)
“More than 25 years after I left it, it made me want to go back on this road that I know by heart, the road of my childhood… ”
The road leading to the film is that of Nacala, a coastal city in northern Mozambique, in the Macua region, where the narrator, daughter of former settlers, records the traces of the Portuguese colonial adventure and those of independence, marked by 16 years of civil war and the harshness of a socialist regime. While former friends and some young people speak of a society that is now democratic, the narrator’s path ventures into the past: that of the old “assimilated”, surrendered to Portuguese culture, that of peasants, witnesses or victims of physical violence, intellectual, but also cultural, imposed by socialism. Moving from a Macua Queen to an Italian missionary, from a sister to a citizen engaged in alternative political experiences, the film proposes a journey illuminated by encounters, an assessment of the recent colonial and post-colonial era, providing the keys to understanding the country of today.
Regresso a Nacala – Part 1/4 (youtube)
Regresso a Nacala – Part 2/4 (youtube)
