Gilda Brasileiro is an Afro-Brazil­ian woman who only recent­ly moved to a vil­lage in the Atlantic rain forest. She is all the more out­raged that no one seems inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of this place, where a secret slave route once passed through in the 19th cen­tu­ry. There is even an intact slave house still stand­ing, which is now used as a small museum. How­ev­er, the slaves are not men­tioned in the museum owner’s nar­ra­tive. Because vir­tu­al­ly no one wants to remem­ber this past, Gilda begins look­ing for evi­dence. In the São Paulo archives, she dis­cov­ers proof that, 50 years after Brazil left the transat­lantic slave trade in 1831, a Catholic priest earned good money sell­ing ille­gal work­ers to the plan­ta­tions. How­ev­er, since this doesn’t seem to bother anyone either, Gilda begins to doc­u­ment on film what she does not want to be for­got­ten. In the thick­et of the jungle, she and her cam­era­man begin look­ing for traces of past crimes.

The two direc­tors were so inspired by their protagonist’s per­sis­tence that they began con­duct­ing their own research. They dis­cov­ered his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs by Marc Ferrez, who cre­at­ed unique visual doc­u­ments of the Brazil­ian coffee plan­ta­tions in the 19. Century.

She cooks bunch­es of sting­ing nettle, blows her nose loudly, can breathe fire when she talks, and was ugly even as a child, Lule says. But then Lule, who is … read more

For cen­turies, the Berbers in the Middle and High Atlas Moun­tains have been sub­sist­ing on farm­ing and rais­ing cattle. How­ev­er, they are no longer able to make a living from … read more

Brahim Nad­hour, a Tunisian who has been living in France since he and his wife sep­a­rat­ed, returns to Tunis to bury his son, Marouane, who died in a motor­cy­cle acci­dent. … read more

The small town of Tori­ta­ma in the barren land­scape of north-east­ern Brazil has declared itself the “cap­i­tal do jeans.” Mil­lions of pairs of jeans are made there every year, most … read more

Sur­vival Strate­gies for Cold Countries There have always been large waves of migra­tion into and out of Europe caused by eco­nom­ic devel­op­ments. Nonethe­less, the arrival of refugees in Ger­many in … read more

The Arhua­co live in the high­est moun­tains of Colom­bia. They wear their tra­di­tion­al white clothes as they have for many cen­turies and main­tain their cul­ture and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, which is tight­ly … read more