Words. "Língua – vidas em Português"  is a documentary feature film  by Victor Lopes, a Brazilian-Mozambican-born director. The film is an encounter with worlds and words through Portuguese language.

Worlds. History and culture of  Mozambican, Goan, Angolan, Japanese, Cape Verdian, Portuguese, Brazilian and Guinean. From morning to night,  it is a whole day  in the life of some  Portuguese speakers from different  places in the world.  In this language, everyday is reborn in  different mouths; it could join the Portuguese Nobel Literature prize winner, José Saramago with the Brazilian samba singer, Martinho da Vila; the Brazilian writer João Ubaldo Ribeiro and Dinho, a young Angolan rap singer. Lisbon streetcar melts with the blue water of the Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro where Teresa Salgueiro sings a fado.  The big ocean that  takes and gets its water is the same that had spread out  the Portuguese language to different continents.

Ocean. The documentary was shot in six countries: Portugal, Mozambique, India, Brazil, France and Japan. It is a deep exploration of the Portuguese language in diverse cultures through the witness of simple and celebrity people.  From  the writer to the street vendor,  language  is democratic, it belongs to everyone, not to the "norma culta".  Several Portuguese languages, several lives in Portuguese.  The situations are the most common in recognizing  the incredible permanence of the Portuguese language in different "histories".

To search one's heart.  The Portuguese language created melodies, rhythms, ways of being in the world, the way to eat, to love, to write poetry. Created and recreated by colonizers, immigrants, natives. The non fictional characters that  Lopes  has  chosen for his film do not perform roles; they are what they are,  their roles are in their language  performed in everyday life.  The people/characters  in the documentary bring their experiences, their memories, and their hopes for future.  Language moves towards and beyond.

In my mother tongue. Some times the documentary loses rhythm, it seems that the director is in love with the material, a fatherly love, and this made it difficult  to conclude the final edit, and to have a critic approach towards his own work. It would be interesting to refine it one more time.  

Lives. Linguistics, fathers, mothers and children, the film is almost a family album, something to remember as our personal memories.  A family of two hundred million people. As the director says: "Every night, two hundred million people dream in Portuguese. Some of them are in this film. "  I am not in the film, but I am one of them.

Língua -  vidas em Portuguese
(Língua – Life in Portuguese)

A TV ZERO and Sambascope production/ co production: Costa do Castelo Filmes Brasil/ Portugal /  NTSC /  104 min

Special Apperances: João Ubaldo Ribeiro/ José Saramago/ Martinho da Vila/ Madredeus/ Mia Couto

Direction: Victor Lopes
Executive Production: Renato Pereira/ Suely Weller/Paulo Trancoso
Script:  Ulysses Nadruz/ Victor lopes
Photography:  Paulo Violeta
Sound:  Paulo Ricardo Nunes
Direction Assistant:  Julia Moraes
Editing:  Pedro Bronz/ Piu Gomes