Flávia Gusmão's directorial début #4 Mangifera is an affecting hybrid film merging documentary, theatricality, drama, and animation. The film opening scene is high on the symbolic: a book buried under a mango tree at the home of late Cape Verdean cultural activist Samira, who passed away suddenly in 2021, leaving behind her best friend, the bereaved director. The film evolves into an experimental exploration of Samira's fictional and emotional geography, blending imagined maps of Cabo Verde and its diaspora. In the process of making the film, it also becomes an cathartic journey to the director herself. Themes of identity, mourning, and loss are central to the story, drawing on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) to guide the narrative's emotional trajectory, while reflecting on the many complexities of cultural memory and diaspora life.



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