Rosa, 20, left Cape Verde to settle in Reboleira, a poor district of Lisbon. She works in a bar to send money home to her children. Caught between the harassment of kingpins and daily police violence, Rosa tries to find solace among the women of the community. But her real escape is music…
Manga d’Terra, the third feature film by Portuguese-Swiss filmmaker Basil da Cunha, explores a place he knows so well, the Reboleira neighbourhood in Amadora, on the outskirts of Lisbon. The character Rosinha, played by Cape Verdean singer Eliana Rosa, is an aspiring singer who is torn between working in a café/bar to send money to her children who have stayed in Cape Verde and trying to find a career in music. But her verve intimidates the men and women of the neighbourhood, who see her as a stranger, a UFO or a threat. She’s never well, but Basil da Cunha’s hand-held camera accompanies her with a warm humanity, the moments when she’s well, when she’s having fun and when she’s singing. The song that also gives the film its title, in which Eliana Rosa finds the song Acácia Maior, is dense, sad and full of sodade from the ‘faraway land’, ‘meu manga d’terra’, where the mangoes are tasty, as opposed to the taste of life in Portugal. A sensory and intuitive film, it’s one of Basil da Cunha’s most beautiful works because it enters us through the heart – ‘the land of light that saw me born’. Completely won over. – Miguel Valverde
