Miguel Moreira’s Portuguese idler travels to Cape Verde to find his dad in in this meandering, lusciously shot drama
There’s a charming, easy swing to this docu-fiction feature from documentary film-makers João Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis. It has a warmth and openness as it follows its nose across the landscape, building episodic encounters with nonprofessional local people into what could be called a quest narrative. Ruminating valuably on the nature of cultural belonging and exclusion, it’s amiably laid-back, though I have to confess I felt that a bit more storytelling structure and energy wouldn’t have gone amiss.
The musician Miguel Moreira plays Djon, essentially a version of himself – a Portuguese guy whose family hails from Cape Verde, the island state and former Portuguese colony 350 miles off the west coast of Africa.