Based on the legend of NABIA, the goddess of rivers and waters in Galician-Portuguese mythology, a wordless allegorical narrative unfolds, celebrating the integration of human cycles into natural cycles, to the extent that harmony allows.
Nabia was the name given by the pre-Roman Iberian peoples to the goddess of fertility, health and abundance, often regarded as a water deity or associated with mountains and forests. Nabia proposes a re-examination of this mythical figure through an iconoclastic haze that lies somewhere between the codes of silent cinema (the aspect ratio, the rejection of dialogue, the instability of focus, the predominance of wide shots, the pictogram-like quality of the images) and the distorting explorations of Alexander Sokurov’s cinema. The result is a period fable touched as much by mystical fantasy as by the soaring montage of dreams. Humans and animals dominate this strange territory where artifice and paganism question the meaning of the ‘natural’. Sabrina D. Marques infuses every image (every gesture, every glance) with a dreamlike quality, completely dissolving narrative conventions and allowing us to sink, slowly, into this amniotic slumber. Until, at last, a child cries and the world begins anew. (Ricardo Vieira Lisboa)
