30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

«Every morning when I go out this door, it's the first thing I see. It's the first to say hello. It is a father, it destroys us but he does not kill us». Chã das Caldeiras is a small community located on the slopes of the Pico do Fogo volcano, in Cape Verde. A powerful eruption, in 2014, has submerged the country in a black flood of debris that now dominates a primitive and solitary landscape: a dark expanse, in which a few roofs of houses still surrounded by the caldera of the eruption emerge. After losing everything they owned, the inhabitants are forced to rebuild their future. But is there really life away from the volcano? Mónica Martins Nunes builds a visual tale about loss, a symbiotic relationship with a maternal, and at the same time devastating, nature that draws the charm of an impossible return to its original state, in which the human figure is a tiny counterpoint to the vastness of the landscape. In the grey there is heat, there is the fire from which to rise again.

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  Mónica Martins Nunes

  Born in Lisbon in 1990, Mónica Martins Nunes now lives and works as a visual artist in Berlin. After studying sculpture at the University of Lisbon, she earned a degree in fine arts from the Universität der Künste in Berlin. In 2016 she won the Elsa-Neumann-Stipendium, assigned by the city of Berlin. Her short experimental film Na Cinza Fica Calor won the prize for best short documentary at DOK Leipzig.