The Land We Never Return To

Leaving, becoming, and returning – that’s every immigrant’s dream. But over time, that dream is diluted by immigration. And when the time to return comes, if it does come, it’s once again a weaning process and readjustment to one’s motherland, which is not quite the same as the one we left. José Vieira, came to France as a child and never returned to his native Portugal. He knows he will never return. His father went back after spending 16 years in France. His story threads through the film acting as an echo to other encounters with Manuel, José Maria, Carolina and others whose dream of “D-Day return” was shattered by bitter reality. Strangers in their own country, they struggle to find a meaning to their scattered lives again. Haunted by the diffuse suffering of this uprooting, which, from now on, gives rhythm to their daily life, they survive. Filmed in Super 8 and digital video, the film takes us along a path between the emigrant’s imagination and the reality of immigration and between the desires and constraints common to all those in exile.