Cá e Lá – 40 Years on Stage is a film about memory, resistance, and the act of returning — not only to a place, but to a gesture, a photograph, a scene, a shared language.

I first encountered the bilingual theatre company Cá e Lá in 2016, through my research into Portuguese migration and cultural practices in France. Their presence within the Parfums de Lisbonne festival — a space where theatre, poetry, and cinema intersect across Paris and Lisbon — immediately resonated with my work and personal questions around identity, displacement, and artistic transmission. Since then, I have followed the company closely, documenting their evolving practice.

In 2022–2023, I joined Cá e Lá as a performer, taking part in bilingual stage productions that explored poetry, history, and memory in both French and Portuguese. The 16th edition of Parfums de Lisbonne, which marked the company’s 40th anniversary, was a turning point. I became increasingly aware of the rich and under-documented history that lived within their work, especially in the voices and bodies of Graça dos Santos and Isabel Vieira, the two women who have carried this company since its founding.

Becoming a mother soon after that season shifted my role, but not my connection. Instead, it led me to this film.

Cá e Lá – 40 Years on Stage is not an external portrait. It’s an embedded, intimate exploration of how memory and art are transmitted — not as fixed narratives, but as performative, evolving gestures. Together, we returned to old photographs, archival footage, and theatrical tableaux from the early years of the company. By reinterpreting those same scenes on stage today, Graça and Isabel activate a process of remembrance that is physical, emotional, and political.

As in my previous work, I filmed and edited alone. This allows for a quieter, more attentive presence — one that invites trust and opens space for unrehearsed, deeply human moments.

This film is part of my larger research-creation practice, where cinema becomes a mode of thinking and feeling through the legacies of migration, gendered memory, and artistic resilience. Cá e Lá means “Here and There” — and this is exactly where the film lives: between generations, between languages, between cities, between lives.