07/08/2023 - Swiss-Portuguese director Basil Da Cunha is back investigating the complex reality of the Reboleira neighbourhood, but this time it’s women who take centre stage

Basil Da Cunha is returning to Locarno’s International Competition - where, in 2019, he presented his second feature film O Fim do Mundo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Basil Da Cunha
film profile] – with a third poetic and powerful movie paying tribute to the women in the peripheral neighbourhood of Reboleira, which is home to an expansive and united Creole community. Despite its appearance, Manga D’Terra [+see also:
trailer
interview: Basil Da Cunha
film profile] is a musical (with music coming courtesy of Eliana Rosa, Henrique Silva and Luis Firmino, and sound design, sound editing and audio mixing entrusted to Adrien Kessler) and an ode to the therapeutic power of music which can liberate hard-to-contain emotions.

The film’s protagonist is Rosa (the brilliant Eliana Rosa), a young, twenty-year-old woman who left her home region of Cape Verde a couple of months previously in order to move to Lisbon and give her children - who have stayed at home with her mother - a better future. The daily reality which Rosa must contend with, however, is anything but rosy. Outside of her job as a general dogsbody, working for the despotic manager (played by the charismatic Nunha Gomes) of a small restaurant in Reboleira, a district she has made her home, like many other Creole migrants, she doesn’t allow herself many pleasures in life. That’s until she loses her job without any kind of warning, and with it, her makeshift home. Suddenly alone without a place to sleep or any money to survive, our protagonist must come to terms with a challenging existence characterised by onerous sexual harassment and terrifying police raids.

Alone with nothing but two suitcases, Rosa only has her wonderful voice to help her escape far away to Cape Verde. But, as she aimlessly makes her way through the streets of Reboleira, our protagonist can nonetheless count on support from the local women whose caresses, hugs or words of advice help her to carry on and walk with her head held high.

What we’re introduced to in Manga D’Terra is the heart – female this time round – of a district full of contradictions and nuances which the director knows well and loves with great intensity. An ensemble film, not only from an aesthetic viewpoint, Manga D’Terra also owes its existence to the generosity of the people who genuinely live in Reboleira, who joined forces to pool whatever they had to hand to give life to an extraordinary musical about the ghetto (a genuine rarity!). It’s a film which quite literally draws force, but always respectfully, from the lives of the people the director meets; individuals who have first-hand experience of the hardships involved in life on the periphery of a picture-postcard city like Lisbon.

Rather than determining to make a feel-good movie which allows viewers to dream and to believe in “happily ever afters”, Basil da Cunha lends visibility to the countless “ordinary” women in Reboleira, to their determination to survive, to their resilience and to the fire that never stops burning inside of them by virtue of music. Rosa might not ever be recognised outside of her neighbourhood, but when she sings, she’s entirely herself and that’s what really matters.

By lending a voice to Rosa and her fellow adventurers, and by showing us the strength required to not lose hope, Basil Da Cunha depicts the inner soul of a district which is already disappearing.

Manga D’Terra is produced by Akka Films and RTS Radio Télévision Suisse in co-production with Continue Walking.

(Translated from Italian)