Cinema
The Tree of Ancestors
A Árvore dos Antepassados
Licínio Azevedo · 1994
Synopsis
In 1984, when the war reached Tete province, his uncles charged Alexandre Ferrão with leading the family to Malawi; there was no time either to say goodbye or to perform the rites for the dead. Ten years later, with peace restored, he decides to bring the twenty or so relatives around him back to the village, so that they may be reconciled with the tree of the ancestors. The film follows this return, from the camp where the family lived to the land of origin.
Context
The project was one of the four films on refugees financed by a BBC initiative. The director went to the largest camp of Mozambican refugees in Malawi, interviewed a hundred or so families there and concluded that the first was the right one, then accompanied with his crew the return of its members, adults and children, to their region, after the peace accords of 1992.
Who it is for
A documentary of about fifty minutes. It helps to know that the war had driven a million and a half Mozambicans beyond their borders.
Prizes and reception
Financed by British television, it was shown under the title The Inheritance Tree by the New York African Film Festival.