DISJUNTOR
OPEN-AIR FILM SERIES
This film series brings together a selection of works that explore experiences of displacement, belonging, and transformation across different landscapes, memories, and communities. Moving between individual journeys and collective histories, these films evoke diverse ways of inhabiting movement, constructing identity, and negotiating the relationship between origin, absence, and reunion.
In dialogue with the theme WANDERINGS, MIGRATIONS, DIASPORAS, the selected films explore both physical and emotional territories shaped by the circulation of people, knowledge, and imaginaries. Oscillating between memory and invention, permanence and change, they also reveal the challenges that accompany processes of displacement: distance, adaptation to new contexts, inequality, feelings of uprootedness, and the forms of exclusion that permeate many migratory experiences. This programme thus offers a space for reflection on the many ways of experiencing mobility and forging connections beyond borders, highlighting both the difficulties and the possibilities of belonging, resilience, and transformation that emerge through these journeys.
PROGRAMME
8 JULY • 9:45 PM
As Melusinas à Margem do Rio, de Mélanie Pereira
2025, 80 min
As she searches through mountains and rivers for Melusina, the legendary mutant mermaid of Luxembourg City, where she grew up, the filmmaker speaks with four women about their uncertain identities: what it means to be an immigrant without being one, and to be Luxembourgish without fully being so. A journey through memories in rainy times. A search for identities that remain fragmented. An uncertain attempt at reconciliation. A reflection on the memory of emigration through the contemporary perspective of a generation whose relationship with territory and displacement is profoundly different.
16 JULY • 9:45 PM
Nha Mila, Denise Fernandes
2020, 18 min
After fourteen years away from her homeland, Salomé travels to Santiago Island, Cape Verde, to visit her brother, whose life hangs by a thread. During a stopover at Lisbon Airport, Águeda, a cleaner, recognises her as “Mila”, her childhood friend. Águeda invites her to spend the hours of her layover at her home, surrounded by the women of her family. As Salomé struggles to loosen the painful bond with her homeland, the spirit of the neighbourhood reconnects her with the essence to which she belongs.
Nha Sunho, José Magro
2021, 20 min
Issa, a young footballer from Guinea-Bissau who, like many other young Africans, dreams of playing in Portugal’s top football leagues. By revealing the voices behind the camera, Nha Sunho becomes a reflection on perspective, bias, and the representation of the Other.
Territórios, Mónica Baptista
2009, 11 min
Two men travel on the same train, a russian soldier and a Chechen man with his family returning from the motherland… Without them knowing a genuine link connects them, Chechnya. A war for independence, for a territory that Russia doesn’t abdicate turns all Chechens into soldiers at birth.
Mistida, Falcão Nhaga
2022, 30 min
A mother returns from shopping, weighed down by heavy bags. She asks her son to help carry them home. As they walk together, they also confront the questions and tensions that weigh upon them.
22 JULY • 9:45 PM
Kora, Cláudia Varejão
2024, 28 min
KORA traça a silhueta de mulheres refugiadas a viver em Portugal. Em comum entre si, trazem o passado no corpo e nas palavras, bem como aqueles que amam impressos em retratos. A partir dessas memórias, acedemos ao olhar íntimo e político de quem reconstrói o (seu) presente.
Letters from Wolf Street, Arjun Talwar
2025, 87 min
From his apartment on Wilcza Street in Warsaw, Arjun Talwar captures Poland’s ever-changing contemporary society. He’s been living in Poland for just over ten years now, and he’s documenting the city’s street life to help him to assimilate. Local people provide Talwar with new perspectives on his complex and contradictory adopted homeland: he learns about the local history from a neighborhood postman, visits a Syrian neighbor who is virtually recreating his hometown of Damascus, and leaves the city to attend a Roma wedding.