Yes, I met Nádia when I invited her to be the actress in my last short film. Already during the preparation phase of the short film we shared some of our life stories and I realized that we had a lot in common. I chose Nádia for this video because she is someone who inspires me a lot, as a person and as an artist. There isn’t a play of hers that I go to see and don’t come away with a new perspective on some concept of life. In conversations with her, there is also always a lightness and I feel understood. So I had this desire to share with more people Nádia’s talent and way of thinking.

In several of Nádia’s works and also in conversations that we had, the concept of the body as a house came up many times. The body as a place we inhabit, regardless of the country or the city we are in, mainly because we are migrant people. A body that may have suffered violence, but which we have to care for and nurture. I chose those houses because they were there in the middle of nature, with their walls open to the world. Abandoned and destroyed by someone, but with potential for much beauty. I wanted to work Nádia’s body in that setting like a plant in photosynthesis, playing with the drawing of sunlight. I also decided to film in Ponta dos Corvos because it is in the Seixal area, where I live and where Nádia lived when she arrived in Portugal.

Regarding the stage, it starts out as the place where Nádia works most of the time, of course. But I also thought of it as the artist’s interior, as opposed to the exterior landscapes. And I chose an empty stage so that we could play with the light as much as possible. I wanted to make a connection between the light of the theater and the sunlight outside. The sun as the information the artist receives from the outside world, the stories she hears, the experiences she has, and the light inside as the way this is worked out in the mind with the rest of the artistic process, becoming art.

Yes, it was on purpose. The yellows are part of what is at the center of this video, which is the sun. Both the real sun, and the one I tried to recreate inside the theater. The brown ones, because of the color of Nádia’s skin, taking into account how much blackness is part of her history and her art. And the green ones are from the plants, from this idea I mentioned before of the body in photosynthesis. We also got to record a part that later didn’t make it into the final cut but that had to do precisely with this idea of the body and the soul as a plant that has to be nourished. And taking these elements, which have been essential in Nadia’s story since the first conversation, I set up this palette of yellows, oranges, browns and dry greens from the first script. The fact that they are warm colors has a lot to do with the idea I wanted to convey of art as comfort. And for me, and I think also for Nádia, comfort refers to the heat, to the origins, to the steam of a good hot plate of food.

Yes, I already knew Ana. She is a person for whom I am very grateful and who has helped me a lot in my journey. But it was the first time she worked with me as a director of photography and I was very happy because she has done an amazing job in that area. I think it went very well, our ideas were in sync. She helped me get through to the technical and concrete some fantasies I had in my head. She was able to work the light exactly as I wanted and also in ways that I didn’t even know I wanted. She brought her experience to my ideas and also challenged me to try new things. It is a collaboration that has grown even stronger and one that I certainly intend to continue.

I identify with many aspects. Even selecting the narration for this video was not an easy job at all. I had had a conversation with Nádia for over an hour, and her story had so many interesting things I wanted to include. But in the end I decided on what resonated with me the most and what I knew would resonate with other people as well. I identify with what she starts by saying in the video, about often feeling that she doesn’t belong to Portugal but also that she no longer belongs to her country of origin (in my case Brazil, in hers, Angola). And also to this final idea that I make art for those who were silenced before me and also to break cycles for those who still come in the future.