Mãos de Prata explores, above all, the idea of memory. This theme derived from a complicated summer, in which memory became one of the most important things for me. On the one hand, it was a difficult time for my whole family, because my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s developed very quickly. It was as if he woke up every day at a different time of his life, and was reliving his memories while telling them, like the great storyteller he always was.

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On the other hand, it was a different summer in a good way, because as my grandfather’s memory were being lost, others were coming to life, as me and my family reviewed the tapes of our own past and discovered a whole universe we didn’t remember. We gathered the family around the television to watch these home movies at least once a week, and it was a fantastic moment, where we remembered the simplicity of a past reality.

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This relieving and remembering of the past memories make us realize how beautiful the little things in life are, and also how they build the person we are today. In this film, I wanted to bring my grandfather’s past to life. Rebuilding his life story through the stories he always told me and still does in his moments of lucidity, the letters he exchanged with my grandmother when he was a military, and the archival photos of his life, since childhood to old age. In addition to this archive of the past, I also added some of my own photographs of the house where my grandfather grew up and where I found the letters, as a part of my own journey through his past.

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In this film, I decided to look at Alzheimer’s in a different way, mainly because I didn’t want to make a sad film. So, I started by thinking about reality as my grandfather sees it, completely forgetting about my side of the equation. I focused on his impressive ability to abstract himself of the real world and live immersed in his own memory. To travel between the past and the present. For me, it is as if he was given the chance to relieve his whole life at its very end, instead of living completely aware of his weakened physical condition. So, one of the questions that comes up in the film is – How important is it to define the line between the past and the present? Basically, between reality and fiction. The documentary takes off from a supposed present and travels through the past, as a metaphor for what has always been my grandfather’s dream, to fly. It accompanies two parallel journeys, that of my grandfather through his past memories, and my own discovery of his past.