Maureen Fazendeiro

A journey through the real history and the tales of a region in southern Portugal and a portrait of the people who have lived there, weaving together accounts of rural workers and field notes of archaeologists, amateur footage and scientific drawings, legends, poems, and songs.

A town in the greater Parisian suburbs, its housing estates, its rose and vegetable greenhouses, its inhabitants. It is winter and a Roma camp has been set up. While most of the local residents are outraged and demand the expulsion of these new neighbors, a few women will try to help them live on the land they occupy.

Crista, Carloto and João are building an airy greenhouse for butterflies in the garden. The three of them share household routines, day after day… And they are not the only ones.

Underscored by French film legend Delphine Seyrig’s evocative recitation of a Henri Michaux poem, Maureen Fazendeiro’s film is a mysterious, multi-textured portrait of eclipse spectators in Portugal.

A portrait of Sonja, adventurer of the twentieth century, living on an island that she built by herself: Motu Maeva.