after mom

Anna is a film director coming to Lisbon to present a film at the Indie Lisboa Film Festival. She arrives to Lisboa Santa Apolónia station by train and immediately makes a phone call. Without success, there is no answer to it. She goes to the Hotel which is in the station square, being recognized as a film maker by the hotel’s desk attendant. He delivers to her a package that has just arrived to her. By isolating herself in the room, she even receives another package to her.

Anna tries one more time the phone call, to the "Boarder of Peace" Museum in Vilar Formoso, a small Portuguese village in the boarder with Spain, again without success. She is delaying the beginning of a project she knows she has to pursue. Anna is tense with the beginning of this project, after her mother’s death.

Eventually Anna opens the packages she received, which are bunches of letters between her mother, Natalia, survivor from Auschwitz, and other Portuguese women. Anna then starts her project ‘après maman’ (“after mom”), an investigation about the connection of her mother to other holocaust survivors. She becomes more peaceful with this new beginning.