Christel Alves Mera, Alma Viva director and glamorous filmmaker

Spotted – The 40-year-old filmmaker has just filmed her first feature film, currently in theaters, in Portugal, the land of her ancestors. She happily blends realism with timeless witchcraft.

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first feature film, alma fifawhich imposes itself as a real shock to cinema, between naturalism and the supernatural. “I treated magic as a belief in spells. I grew up with women who believed in the power of spirits and plants. But my film is not only Portuguese. I hope it speaks to every person around the world who has lived in small, remote villages.” The director highlights strong, free and willingly vulgar heroines: I made this film to make my mother stop being ashamed of her folklore origins, and to show her that cinema embellishes banality. »

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Councils and excursions. Born in Montreuil (93) to Portuguese immigrant parents, including one who fled the Salazar dictatorship, she learned to develop her sense of imagination by observing her relatives and neighbors, and thanks to a French tutor who discovered Antigone : “One click, at which point I decided to leave the suburbs and take acting lessons.” The Jacques-Lecoq School of Training as an Actress and Performing Arts followed at the college where, for a year, she took lessons from Jean Roche: “Through an anthropological approach, I entered the cinema.” And that it begins there, then, with two documentaries shot in Cape Verde and Angola, two former Portuguese colonies.