Tabu 15

Pilar spends her first years of retirement trying to straighten up the world and dealing with other people’s guilt, an increasingly frustrating task these days. She takes part in peace vigils, collaborates with Catholic charities, wants to lodge young Polish girls coming to Lisbon on a Taizé ecumenical meeting and constantly hangs up and takes down an ugly painting made by a friend so as not to offend his feelings should it not be in view when he comes to visit…

She is mostly troubled by her neighbour Aurora, a temperamental and eccentric octogenarian who escapes to the casino whenever she has any money on her. She talks constantly about her daughter who seems to not want to see her, has hangovers from anti‐depressants and suspects her Cape Verdean maid Santa is wickedly practising voodoo against her.

Before dying, Aurora will make a mysterious request which Pilar and Santa combine efforts to accomplish. She wants to find a man, Gian Luca Ventura. Ventura has a secret pact with Aurora and a story to tell; a story that occurred fifty years ago, shortly before the beginning of the Portuguese colonial war. It starts like this: “Aurora had a farm in Africa at the foothills of Mount Tabu…”

Please note: the screening on Monday 10 September is a Kino Bambino parent and baby screening.