“… there is still a lot to be told, having as background the experiences of the outskirts of Lisbon, places with disruptive potential but still dormant.”

ARRIAGA is my fifth film as a director, and I feel that there is still a lot to be done about narratives about social reality, especially about the peripheries of big cities. ARRIAGA is part of a film triptych that began with BASTIEN (2016) and will end with LEBSI. In these narratives, I aspire to give focus to the stories lived by young people who live in places of great vulnerability from the social-community point of view, but especially they are disqualified by a system that excludes them from the real possibilities or structures that could lead them to success. Arriaga is a young middle class, son of the third generation of the African diaspora in Portugal and who in a different context would not have sought respectability or acceptance by other displaced individuals of the society or without any direction specifically in its integration in society in general. In this context, I give visibility to the real dreams and transformations of the characters of the film such as music, dance, and resilience but also certain ease that are factors that can be highlighted and combated with the integrated sensitization in the places characteristically referred to as peripheral. I decided to give continuity to the pro-disruptive discourse of empowerment and decentralization of the social ‘machine’ against the disadvantaged and genuine young people who have reinvented culture in the border regions of large urban centers.

KUSSA © 2019