In a bathroom at the Lisbon airport, Maria Salomé meets Águeda. They are both Cape Verdeans: the former is on a layover towards Santiago Island, and the latter is responsible for cleaning the place. Maria Salomé does not remember, but the two of them know each other from childhood, when they both lived in Assomada, and she was still known simply as Mila. We are not told where Mila comes from, only that she has never been to Lisbon and is returning to Cabo Verde, fourteen years after emigrating, in order to meet her sick brother. The layover is an excuse for an encounter, in a neighborhood in the suburbs of Lisbon, where creole is common, with other two women, Celina and Sheila. Using several symbolic references – the earring, the mirror, the plant roots -, Denise Fernandes offers a reflection on memory, belonging, oblivion and out-of-placeness, narrated and lived in the feminine, traditionally a space of silencing and invisibility. “Nha Mila” marks the debut at Curtas of this Portuguese filmmaker, who is of Cape Verdean descent and currently lives in Switzerland. (PC)