Serpentrio / Serpentarius (2019) dir. Carlos Conceio

Serpentarius is a quest framed by mortality and memory. It begins with a personal story, signed with the name of the director. His mother adopted a macaw with a 150-year life span, on the condition he promise to take care of it when she dies, and it’s now time for him to collect the bird, crossing the thousands of miles from his home in Europe to hers in Africa. It ends with a dedication to Conceição’s recently deceased grandmother, Palmira Ventura, accompanied by worn, sepia-toned family photographs. The director’s own heritage, then, blurs ambiguously with myth in this realm where bonds cross lifetimes and continents, and nature exhibits a resilience and magnificence that aligns it with the unlimited possibilities of magic realist fantasy.