Retrospective: Susana de Sousa Dias | IDFA Festival

Retrospective: Susana de Sousa Dias

Retrospective: Susana de Sousa Dias

In celebration of our Guest of Honor, IDFA presents several films by acclaimed filmmaker, curator, and academic Susana de Sousa Dias. Known for her singular approach to archival images and cinematic form, her work interrogates dictatorship, colonial legacies, and the fragile terrain of memory.

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Susana de Sousa Dias

The faces of political prisoners stare straight back at us from photos in dossiers from dictatorship-era Portugal as we hear their recollections. A powerfully eloquent and multi-award-winning minimalist documentary.

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Criminal Case 141/53

Criminal Case 141/53

Susana de Sousa Dias

The story of two sisters in Portugal who were arrested in the early 1950s for protesting a law that barred nurses from marrying. One of them endured the hardships of frequent beatings and solitary confinement.

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Fordlandia Malaise

Fordlandia Malaise

Susana de Sousa Dias

A carefully composed reflection on the failed neo-colonial project Fordlândia in Brazil, a town founded by Henry Ford in 1928. It was built for the workers of the rubber plantation that was intended to supply his car factories in the United States.

Fordlândia Panacea

Fordlândia Panacea

Susana de Sousa Dias

Fordlândia was established as Henry Ford’s utopian dream but ended as a ghost town in the Brazilian jungle. This hypnotic film foregrounds the voices of the Indigenous people who are working to redefine this place.

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Journey to the Sun

Journey to the Sun

Susana de Sousa Dias, Ansgar Schaefer

Archive films bring to life the bittersweet memories of Austrians who as children were sent to stay with host families in Portugal to recuperate after the traumas of the Second World War.

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Obscure Light

Obscure Light

Susana de Sousa Dias

Three children speak about the traumatic impact of the persecution of their parents, labeled enemies of the state by Portugal’s 20th-century dictatorship. A restrained but powerful reconstruction of childhoods scarred by an inhuman regime.

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Post Criminal Case

Post Criminal Case

Susana de Sousa Dias

In this sequel to Criminal Case 141/53 (2000), Susana de Sousa Dias reflects on the earlier film, and on the complex dialogue between archive and personal memory in a history marked by dictatorship.

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Still Life

Still Life

Susana de Sousa Dias

Portugal’s Carnation Revolution of 1974 brought an end to the longest dictatorship of 20th-century Europe. A collage of news images, propaganda films and police photos sketch a picture of this almost forgotten and barely processed era.