Composting Cinema: Essays on the Soil

Daniela Rodrigues / Portugal / 2026 / World Premiere / 25 min.

synopsis

Soil is a natural and cultural space, a form of memory: its layers hold hunger and sustenance, care and plunder, knowledge and secrets; it is both a source and a grave. An ethnographic and artistic exploration of the erosion-stricken Alentejo region in southern Portugal brings together rotoscoped archival films, animated herbaria, soil chromatograms and the electrical signals of plants translated into sound. Footage of regenerative farming is developed in a bath made from cork oak acorns.

“While conducting research on regenerative practices in the eroded soils of Montemor-o-Novo, southern Portugal – a place where I lived for five years and engaged in agricultural and cultural life – I began to wonder: how can soil and its complex assemblage of entities and relations be made to speak?” — Daniela Rodrigues

biography

Daniela Rodrigues (1984) is a Portuguese anthropologist, visual artist, filmmaker and researcher into alternative narrative forms in audiovisual anthropology, based in Marseille. She combines documentary film, ethnographic research and drawing, and focuses on material culture and memory. Her films include Todos os rios vão dar ao Carmo (2014) and Os Últimos Pioneiros (2012).