Photos of a sunset. A book about frogs held by hands. A woman’s face reading. A wildcat among several hands. A passing sunrise. Based on the poem “Esta es la mano que cuida” [This Is the Hand that Cares], by veterinarian and writer María Sánchez, this essay is build as a diptych on the learning processes of our relationship with other species.
In the heart of Bairro Alto, right in the centre of Lisbon, the building of an old printing workshop is demolished to make way for a development of luxury apartments. Seeing this demolition as a perfect image for portraying the death of a certain Lisbon in the wake of the financial crisis and the ensuing real estate and touristic boom, the director proposes to film an urban diary portraying the daily life of the construction site and those who work there.
A wagon loaded with the skeleton of a whale — one of the most significant pieces of the Nazarene school cabinet, leaves after the school building was sold to make a luxury hotel. The van crosses those emblematic places of Rome, which, like the school itself, have been displaced and emptied of meaning in a speculative operation to clean up the history generated by the city's own tourism.
Matixa, 22, lives with her parents. Her bedroom and her stability are in disarray: the situation is explosive. Helped by her friend Leire, she looks for support outside the family. Convinced that cutting ties with her mother will make her freer, she decides to leave home.
1966. En el pequeño pueblo de Bizkarsoro, en el País Vasco francés, cuatro jóvenes encuentran algunos pedazos de papel enterrados en un bosque. Estos tienen viejas palabras escritas en vasco, pero Michelle tiene 21 años y no las entiende. En su familia hace tiempo que no se habla esa lengua.
Two women take the weight of a world where care is in ruins. Gladys, from her everlasting confinement in the house where she works as a live-in servant. Ima, in her unending wait in front of the sea for the next ship to break its nets. Spaces that are also work, works that are houses and houses that are not always homes. The memories of their experiences are intertwined in a sensory story that leads us to the question: In whose hands is it that the situation changes?
