After 500 years of African presence in Portugal, Black people find refuge in the utopian creation of The Island (A Ilha). A place founded in African history, a place to rest and to create futures. A place residing in the space in between fiction and reality, where the potentialities to re-write histories and think futures are brought together through the characters and their journeys.
A space reinvented through the real and documentary to create a work of fiction that speaks of the pasts’ erased histories. The journey to the Island requires a physical and inner journey for each of the characters, to a higher state that demands redemption of the past and the ability to imagine a future. The woman, who escapes the memories of the past by confronting her executioners. The archeologist who investigates the memory in order to understand the present and so that similar mistakes will not be repeated on The Island. The capitalist man who, in his eternal dissatisfaction, reflects on how he has become the oppressor, the settler. The children, who with their pure and vital force energize all the other characters through their fantasy and dreams.
The Island is centered on the recognition of African histories and cultures in their autonomy and diversity. It dismantles prejudices that have taken root in Portuguese society, giving value and respect to the active and dynamic participation of men and women of African origin who have lived and continue to live in Portugal, whose achievements and contributions are central to the histories of the places in which they are integrated today. It weaves from a female biographical point of view several stories that challenge patriarchal narrative conventions. The film questions standard notions of identity based on categories of race and gender, through a counter-narrative that is constructed by the complex biographies that intersect. The Island situates itself outside of the Eurocentric gaze, being developed with a black feminist perspective, realizing through its narrative the operation of the oppositional gaze (Bell Hooks) where stereotypical representations of gender and race are deconstructed.