For Anteu to be born, his mother had to die. Some years later, his father died and, when he turned 16, his grandmother passed away. As the years went by, everyone gradually passed on until Anteu was left on his own as the only man in his village. With the machines as his only company, he builds an automated structure that allows him to be buried after he dies. “Anteu” is a film of contrasts and opposites – sometimes compatible (sound and silence, black-and-white and colour), others not (the cradle and the grave) – often overlapping in order to allow the creation of new meanings (such as the double-voiced narration by Gonçalo M. Tavares and by João Vladimiro himself). Back to Curtas after “Pé na Terra” (2006), João Vladimiro invites the viewer to reflect on life and death as rituals that transform the landscape, but also to search for the place of man as a telluric being, for the place of his uprooting, and the mediating role of nature as a way of understanding the world in its complexity. (PC)