A visual jouney mixing documentary and fiction My Grandma Trelotótó recreates the world of the director's gran, and by embarking with her on this path we will rediscover something of our own family experiences. "When my gran died I wanted to save her and filming her semed to me to be the only solution. I began by filming her daily routine and I rediscovered the ways of the countryside, where people still make bread at home and time has a different duration. In the attic of her house I found a trunk full of letters from when she lived in Mozambique in 1946/57. I discovered a new intimacy with my gran, I got to know her fears and desires, I lived in her world. Through her letters I caught a glimpse of colonial Mozambique. I went to Africa to film the places where my gran had been happy. Not out of a hankering for the past, but to film the unstoppable life force that is constantly changing and regenerating itself. I wanted to show how places are both spaces of memory and of transformation.

My grandmother had a strength and a love of life so great that they led me to believe that some of us are able to escape death and become immortal. When she died I wanted to save her. I decided to film her and I wasn’t going to let the lack of a body hold me back. I filmed a ghost so that I could then return her to the realm of the living, as Orpheus wished to do with Eurydice. Arming myself with every tool I could find, I created a world in which she continued to live. It is a world, a film, made of many different times and registers. Making it was like constructing a timepiece – a timepiece built from love. This film was a journey towards resurrection and is my way of giving my grandmother the immortality that I believe is rightfully hers. (Catarina Ruivo)

Award for Best Portuguese Feature at IndieLisboa 2019. Jury Statement: "The best film we have seen among the features of National Competition is the film that provoked our strongest emotions. As a portrait of a life lived it generously shares an approach to a close person as much as it is a journey into the past and across continents. The film employs many different formal strategies, all of them a veracious indication of empathy and love. We give the award for Best Portuguese Feature to A Minha Avó Trelotótó by Catarina Ruivo."