Vitalina′s husband left Cape Verde 25 years ago to work in Portugal. When Vitalina manages to join him, she learns that he died 3 days earlier. She will try to reconstruct the life of this man, become for her a stranger in an unknown country. Vitalina Varela is a continuation of Colossal Youth (Ventura plays the role of a priest here) and Horse Money, where the heroine played her own role. It is in the memories and the nightmares of this woman that Pedro COSTA drew. The filmmaker plunges once again into this world that is familiar to him : Fontainhas, the ghetto of migrant workers from Cape Verde in the suburbs of Lisbon. Choosing his actors among the inhabitants of the neighborhood, he makes Vitalina′s story a sublime visual poem immersed in chiaroscuro, reminiscent of Dreyer′s Vampyr, and Jacques TOURNEUR′s fantastic films. this people of ghosts living on the sidelines of Portuguese society, in ruined buildings and in an endless night is also the victim of Western colonialism. Dark, dreamlike and political, this masterpiece of one of the world′s greatest filmmakers is carried by the strength and obstinacy of its interpreter and is not devoid of hope. (Stéphane Du MESNILDOT)