Summary

The starting point was a commonplace: «My life could be a movie». Following what each person believed to be subject for film, this documentary tells 4 life stories. This implies a main question: what moves the protagonists to show & tell their lives as a movie? Revisiting places where they lived, they evoke their memories, and through their personal documents and archive footage, we retrace their paths and decisions in life. As their destinies have crossed at several moments, places and circumstances, we are able to understand it from different, and contrasting, perspectives. They testify post-war famine, emigration to Africa or France, Salazar’s dictatorship, colonial war and the socialist revolution – in brief, the way Portuguese society evolved in the second half of the century. ILLUSIAD is a film about common people’s hopes, disillusions and survival skills.