As part of the activities of the Seminar – Racism in Portugal, the director Dulce Fernandes will be present to introduce and discuss with the audience her documentary “Contos do Esquecimento”, about the discovery of the remains of enslaved people in Lagos.

CONTOS DO ESQUECIMENTO (TALES OF FORGETTING
by Dulce Fernandes

CONTOS DO ESQUECIMENTO, a documentary directed by Dulce Fernandes, delves into collective memory and the historical silences surrounding Portugal’s role in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved people. The film takes as its starting point the discovery, in 2009, of a group of 158 skeletons of enslaved Africans—men, women and children—in a fifteenth-century urban refuse pit in Lagos, Algarve, during the construction of a car park.

The film was selected for several international festivals, including the IDFA – International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Netherlands), Bergamo Film Meeting (Italy), Crossing Europe Film Festival, Linz (Austria), Ethnocineca – International Documentary Film Festival Vienna (Austria), and the Mumbai International Film Festival (India). In Portugal, it premiered at IndieLisboa 2024, where it received a Special Mention from the Árvore da Vida Jury. The film had its commercial release in Portugal in July 2025.