Hugo Vieira da Silva

Ariel de Bigault's work has been connected to the routes of the Lusophone World. In Fantasmas do Império we are guided by the saotomean actor Angelo Torres through some works of the Portuguese cinema that explored its colonial past. Some directors as Fernando Matos Silva, João Botelho or Margarida Cardoso help to understand imperialism, colonialism, and propaganda seen through the "family album" which is the Portuguese cinematic collective imaginary.

At the end of the nineteenth century, two inexperienced Portuguese colonizers, with a vague intention of civilizing the colonies, disembark in a remote part of the Congo River in order to coordinate a trading post. As time goes by, they become increasingly demoralized by their inability to profit from the ivory trade. A mutual feeling of distrust and misunderstadings with the locals isolate them at the heart of the tropical jungle. Faced with each other, they begin a journey towards the abyss.

Since 1980 German institutions send teens to the south of Portugal under experimental projects of social rehabilitation. That's how Katrin comes to Alentejo. She will establish a unique relationship with the surrounding environment, a situation exacerbated by the harshness of the landscape and the emptiness of a socially desertified region. Katrin, twith Julia and Pedro, will build a refuge in a no-man's-land...