ORIGINS

This film has been built from a deep analysis of texts, images and videos of the Portuguese colonial war, with special emphasis in Guinea Bissau, from reports of sons of ex-combatants and from my own experience as a ex-sergeant's son.

The video above, directed by a team of french reporters in Guinea Bissau, alwowed me to enter that war in an human scale. The casual way of shooting an ambush, at minute 5 of this video, reveals the quiet and brutal realism from this war, which has nothing of spectacular about it.

NOTÍCIAS

By publishing the master's thesis about the Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in colonial war veterans' adult offspring, Susana Martinho Oliveira studied and analyzed the dimensions of the Colonial War consequences on the portuguese society.

I'll leave you some links below which have infuenced all the project development work.

"War Traumas: Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in colonial war veterans' adult offspring"

( Susana Martinho de Oliveira - MASTERS IN PSYCHOLOGY

Specialization in Stress and Wellbeing - 2008 )

"Women and children also suffer from war stress"

( Público - 08/11/2009)

"Over time we start to get destroyed from within"

( Público - 08/11/2009 )

"The war veterans' offspring also have war memories" 

( Público - 21/03/2011)

Support
(Support for War Veterans' Victims of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Association)

INITIAL PROJECT

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Unlike all of the previous films, this project was first created from the writing of the script, and that factor connected me more to the narrative design than to the graphic design, as it usually does. Brief topics, written in small pieces of paper scattered around the living room floor started to connect fragments from 4 stories, 4 moments and 4 places, all in a very spontaneous and free creative process.

SYNOPSIS

This is a movie about how the War settles inside the body of the people who get to live it. And then, thousand of kilometers and years after, contaminates, like a virus, other human beings.

SCRIPT'S FRAGMENT

STORYBOARD'S FRAGMENT

FINAL WRITTEN MESSAGE

In the first draft of the project, the movie would end with this message, that would be shown immediatly before the final credits.

Having finished the final version of the film, I decided to remove it because, despite its value, was having a too big influence on the film's meaning, and for me it was important the audience could feel free while seeing it.

FIRST DRAFTS

 

   

The drafts above were still in an early stage of concept, but already had the substantial about the physical features of the characters, as well as some of the technical development details we would later use in production.