Synopsis
Bulakna is a documentary about the diaspora of Filipino women (the “Filipinas”) who emigrate alone, staying abroad, sometimes for decades, to provide better living conditions for their families and children, who await them in the homeland. Connecting personal stories with the collective History, going from the particular to the universal, it tackles fundamental issues of contemporary times: the deep social inequality in the global economy of a post-colonial world, while at the same time touches the most intimate things in a human being – the value of our work, our bodies and our lives.
Awards
Prix Renaud Victor, FID Marseille, France, 2025; Alchemies Award, SEMINCI, Valladolid International Film Week, Spain, 2025.
Leonor Noivo
Leonor Noivo grew up in Macau until the mid-90s, where she studied photography before returning to Lisbon to graduate film school in 2004. She later studied in the documentary course at Ateliers Varan, the cinéma vérité school, which became a decisive artistic influence for her work. Her films have been shown and awarded at festivals around the world, such as Locarno, Rotterdam, Zinebi, FID Marseille, among others. She is the co-founder of the production company Terratreme Filmes, a collective platform created in 2008 in Lisbon, where she develops her work as a filmmaker, alongside producing other directors’ projects on different stages of creation.
Filmography
Salitre (2005), Latter-Day Saints (2009), Outras Cartas ou O Amor Inventado (2012), The City and the Sun (2012), September (2016), Cidade (2017), All I Imagine (2017), Raposa (2019), Dawn (2021), Bulakna (2025).
