La Lectura (The Reading.)

La Lectura was inspired by my late Vovó-Maria Do Socorro. She was born in the 40's on the equator in Macau, a small municipality in Brazil but spent most of her life in Rio De Janeiro. She was a complicated woman and I didn't get to know her much on a personal level due to us living on complete opposite sides of the globe, a language barrier and her passing away when I was around seven years old. My mother and her had a conflicting relationship. My Vovó was a complicated woman, she had a traumatized past and due to lack of resources often relied on men for her survival. She was an alcoholic and often verbally abused my mother.
Though my mother certainly has a whole range of feelings about her, she also has a lot of good memories. My Vovó bringing clothing and food donations to the local church, engulfing the house with incense, her making elaborate cakes for birthday parties, listening to the radio in the mornings, always painting her lips and nails red...and reading tarot cards. Often just for her friends but sometimes for extra money. She even predicted my mother would marry a farmer (I mean my dad is a tree farmer.)
My Vovó sadly passed down a great deal of internalized homophobia to my mother, which has stemmed to me. And this has partially hurt the relationship with my Mãe and I. I don't know when that'll be prepared or when I'll get the courage to speak on it.
This movie is in part me asking, what if I got to know my Vovó better? On that sort of level? What if she saw this in the cards but took it as a beautiful bit of destiny and not a curse?
During a table read, Lorena Tamayo, who plays Abuela, spoke to how we often talk about generational trauma, but how rarely we talk about generational love, which is also passed down to us. La Lectura is deep down, a movie about Generational Love in spite of and because of generational trauma.
I don't know what my Vovó would have thought of this movie, or me dedicating it to her. But I hope that maybe if there's an afterlife, it reaches to her. Wherever she is.