Memória Viva

Synopsis

“Memória Viva” was born from a profoundly personal absence: the lack of a relationship with my grandparents. I grew up with the feeling of an empty space within me, made of conversations I never had, affections I never experienced, and memories I never got to build. When I started this project with a senior community, I believed I was searching for these missing pieces.

But the film ended up becoming something else.

While filming these people, I unexpectedly began to recognize my own parents in them. The project ceased to be just about the grandparents I never had and became a confrontation with time itself: aging, fragility, loneliness, fear, and the inevitability of life's passage. For the first time, I felt aging not as an abstract idea, but as something profoundly close.

Influenced by Agnès Varda's intimate and personal approach, I wanted to create a film where the camera was not invisible or emotionally distant. I embraced my own presence, doubts, and emotional transformation as part of the cinematic language itself. “Living Memory” thus became a film-diary, constructed through encounters, silences, portraits, and voice-over reflections that move between documentary observation and personal confession.

More than seeking definitive answers, I became interested in the questions that remained: how do we deal with absence? How do we face the passage of time? How do we create connection despite fear?

Amidst all these uncertainties, I found something unexpected: the affection, listening, and closeness that I always imagined existed in the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren.

This film is basically less about loss and more about the possibility of human connection. A gesture of listening, presence, and shared vulnerability between strangers who, little by little, became family.

— Free admission