Sing My Brother, Help me to Sing
(Canta meu irmão, ajuda-me a cantar)

José Cardoso was born in Portugal but brought up in Mozambique, where he travels extensively to collect sounds and give them back to the country’s artists. These are the people that the filmmaker addresses using the familiar second-person “tu”, with a gaze akin to that of an ethnologist – like a hand reaching out to them. A brotherly, barely visible gesture seems to unite the filmmaker with his protagonists and spectators as traditional instruments follow on from one another on the screen in series of dances, music and songs. Or, how a rich and diverse secular musical legacy encounters a camera that finds the right distances to create a proximity in which different peoples now seem to sing with a single voice. AR