My Grandmother Trelotótó review – following a lost family history from Mozambique to Portugal

Catarina Ruivo’s sprawling documentary trails her late relation back to the former colony, following the letters she wrote home in the 1940s and 50sAt nearly three hours, Catarina Ruivo’s sprawling documentary seeks to halt the march of death. When her grandmother Júlia died, she left behind a treasure trove of letters, written between 1946 and 1957 when she was living in Mozambique, then under Portuguese colonial rule. Read out by actor Rita Durão, this correspondence captures the hopes and dreams of a young woman, newly married and adapting to a foreign land. The voiceover is paired with Ruivo’s footage of present-day, independent Mozambique, images that breathe a second life into these messages from the past.The juxtaposition between Júlia’s writings and the Mozambican cityscapes recalls Chantal Akerman’s seminal News from Home (1978), in which Akerman combined her narration of her mother’s letters with languid shots of New York City to reveal the intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship and the rhythm of urban living. My Grandmother Trelotótó doesn’t quite achieve such cinematic alchemy. Júlia’s letters, while seemingly benevolent, betray a colonial gaze that erases the hardships endured by the local population (a fact acknowledged by Ruivo in an artist’s statement). The way Mozambique is framed – quotidian scenes full of anonymous faces – appears merely illustrative; it does little to complicate or push against Júlia’s problematised point of view. Continue reading...

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