Aurora

It all started with a dream in which the filmmaker, João, told his mother that he was going in search of the children his grandmother had helped to bring into the world. Her name was Aurora, and she was a midwife. It is said that no child ever died on her watch.
Accompanied by his grandmother’s ghost, João embarks on a journey to meet the women in his family, Aurora’s ancestors and descendants, the living and the dead. In what resembles a journey of initiation, tracing his origins to the land of his grandmother in the deep, arid sertão of Bahia in Northeast Brazil, he discovers a series of tragic destinies. A curse cast on his family, revealing a structural history of violence against women rooted in patriarchal culture, evangelism and slavery. The search for Aurora (the dawn, the light) reveals the full extent of the violence on which Brazil has been built.
And yet, despite it all, Aurora harnesses the medium of cinema in a profoundly beautiful undertaking, appeasing ghosts by restoring their faces and their stories - and perhaps, transforming these stories by inventing new endings rooted in love, affection and care.
Mourad-Anis Moussa

Aurora, 2025
Seasick, 2021
Les Enfants fantômes, 2016
Les Oiseaux sont distraits, 2016
Toré, 2015
La Faille dans le paysage, 2014
La Double coïncidence des désirs, 2013
Ici, là-bas et Lisboa, 2012
Le Bain, 2012
La Bibliothèque la nuit, 2011