The word vindima (grape harvest) carries within it the word vida (life), and in the Douro, one is inseparable from the other. The landscape, shaped by generations of labor, holds the imprints of those who work the land, just as the lines on their faces and the calluses on their hands bear the marks of time, seasons, and tradition.

Uma Vindima is a deeply personal and autobiographical film, woven from the memories, gestures, and stories of my grandparents, João and Teresa, who have lived and worked this land their entire lives. Filming became a way of preserving their voices, their routines, their ways of moving through the vineyards—a way of understanding how the land shapes its people and how, in turn, people shape the land.

This film was also my first exploration of cinematic language, and more than anything, of editing—the space where memory, time, and images meet. Through the editing process, I assembled a dialogue between past and present, between what I filmed and what had been filmed before me. Personal archives—videos and photographs taken by different members of my family—became part of this conversation, allowing me to explore how film itself can be an act of transmission.

Uma Vindima was created as part of my Master’s in Cinema at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (ESTC), in Lisbon. This academic context allowed me to develop a research-driven artistic approach, where documentary practice and autobiographical storytelling merged into a single cinematic language.

Filming alone, with a handheld camera, allowed me to move intimately within these spaces, to become both participant and observer. The harvest is not just labor; it is a ritual of reunion, of songs echoing across the terraces, of shared meals, of time measured in grapevines and weathered tools. The nonlinear structure of the film mirrors the way memory itself unfolds—fragmented yet deeply connected.

At its core, Uma Vindima is an act of remembrance and a reflection on transmission—on the ways in which knowledge, traditions, and affections pass from one generation to the next. It is also a meditation on absence: the empty rooms, the voices that linger in the walls, the fading photographs. The harvest, much like life itself, is cyclical. There is always another season, another year, another promise of return.