Dimitra Kouzi: You constructed the film using Cabral’s own words in a first-person voice-over. What were the ethical and emotional challenges of giving voice to someone who can no longer speak for himself, especially someone as politically and historically charged as Cabral?
Miguel Eek: It was an enormous challenge – a responsibility that at times frightened me – and one in which the complicity of experts, both from Cabral’s circle and from my own team, was essential. The film remains a speculative exercise based on Cabral’s letters, poems, and political writings. These form the raw material that sustains it, yet it is still a highly subjective selection of texts and moments, in dialogue with an image track where archival footage coexists with images I filmed myself, marked by chance and by the contemporary world.
Dimitra Kouzi: As a non-African filmmaker, how did you navigate the risk of re-colonising the narrative of an African liberation hero – not through military or economic force, but through cinematic authorship?
Miguel Eek: It’s a fundamental question, because that risk is always present. It would have been impossible to finance this film without an international co-production – one in which Europe, a continent that was and still is colonising in many ways, funds this story. This is not the first, nor will it be the last, film made about Cabral. The many dimensions of his life and work invite readings from different times, realities, and perspectives.
In my case, I focused on the global dimension of his figure. Amílcar Cabral is one of the most lucid personalities in history – not only African history, but world history. His lucidity enabled him to elevate the struggle for the independence of two small countries to a diplomatic level, turning it into an international issue while forcing societies to reflect on their own biases, prejudices, and privileges.
What I find most universal about Cabral is not only his international reach but his deeply humanist vision, expressed in his texts and letters, where love, learning, fear, and human rights are questioned and confronted as challenges of humanity itself.
Dimitra Kouzi: It’s quite daring to make a poetic essay about a politician. Of course, with Cabral it suits the subject, but it can’t have been easy to produce this film, since you’re both director and producer. Did those two identities ever clash?
Miguel Eek: All the time. It’s my daily struggle – how to direct films that I also produce. I spent years in discussions about form, trying to understand what I was doing. Amílcar is the first poetic essay I’ve made myself. My earlier films were more contemporary character portraits, and navigating between ideas, metaphors, and textures has been a real challenge – but one I’ve enjoyed. I often felt insecure, but I had a great team: Federico Delpero as editor, João Pedro Plácido as DoP, Alba Lombardia as co-writer, and all my co-producers, who reassured me that we were on the right track. It was especially important that Cabral’s compatriots felt we were honouring the promise I made to them. Although the film was co-produced by four countries, we made it on a very limited budget, which also conditioned the choices.
Dimitra Kouzi: I can empathise with you as I’m also working on a film about someone larger than life, and I understand how difficult it is to step out of the comfort zone of a conventional portrait. I imagine there were moments when no one – especially the financiers – believed in your vision.
Miguel Eek: It’s hard to convince people to fund a poetic essay about a politician. But Cabral was also a poet, and his sensitivity speaks through his texts and letters. It’s rare for the relatives of a historical figure to share such intimate correspondence, and that completely changed my approach.
At first I imagined a collection of testimonies, but I realised the film was full of myth and light, with no shadows. A portrait made only of light is unfair to the complexity of life – and boring. I needed to find new ways to approach him, including the darker aspects of his actions and thoughts. I had to move beyond fascination and approach him differently.
Dimitra Kouzi: How did you manage to avoid idealising him?
Miguel Eek: By choosing to tell the story entirely through his own words. That decision forced me to abandon any testimony that simply praised him. The challenge was to build a dramaturgy from the letters he wrote – to wives, comrades, friends – so that the story would unfold through those voices.
I also drew on documents from the Portuguese secret police, which reveal the tension between his utopian ideals and the harsh reality of war, betrayal, and racism within his own movement. These texts exposed how Cabral’s dream of fairness collided with circumstances he couldn’t control: corruption, mistrust, and discrimination even within the PAIGC. They helped me grasp both the complexity of his struggle and his humanity.
At the same time, we were aware that, as a foreign crew, we might arouse the same kind of suspicion that Cabral, as a Cape Verdean, once faced in Guinea. He was both African and an outsider, a bridge between Portugal and Guinea. That tension – between belonging and estrangement – was something we also tried to integrate into the film’s perspective.
Dimitra Kouzi: What was the filming process like? The film blends archival and contemporary material. When and why did you decide to work that way, and how did you use the archive, 16 mm shooting, and sound to tell the story?
Miguel Eek: The process and formal structure of the film were extremely difficult to find; it took 10 years to reach the final approach. Discovering Cabral’s intimate letters to his two wives changed everything – that was when I realised the subjectivity of the character would have to shape the film itself. I developed a kind of script – not a conventional one, but a guide indicating the images I needed to shoot in order to express Cabral’s poetic vision, the parts missing from the archives. For me, the key was how to convey the intimacy and subjectivity of the character – not only through his words, but also through the selection of images that reveal his attention to the land and to people, his way of observing and understanding the world.
Working with João Pedro Plácido, the director of photography, we shot on 16 mm film – a decision that imposed strict limitations. The cameras were old and fragile, often breaking down after two or three shots, so it was a constant alternation between repairing and shooting.
I was searching for what I call mantra images – long, minimal shots that allow the viewer to enter Cabral’s words, to immerse themselves in the visual rhythm created by his imagined voice. We tried to reconstruct the feeling of Cabral arriving in Guinea for the first time: an agronomist coming from the arid landscapes of Cape Verde, suddenly encountering the lush, humid abundance of Guinea – full of water, vegetation, and life. We aimed to embody that same curiosity.
I wasn’t working from a detailed screenplay, but rather from notes about textures and spaces. Later, in the editing room with Federico Delpero, we confronted the texts with the images, exploring how they could resonate with one another. For Amílcar, editing lasted four years. One of our key intentions was to blur the distinction between the archival and the newly shot material. Even though the archives include both black-and-white and colour footage, we didn’t want to separate them sharply. We wanted viewers to feel that they were inhabiting Cabral’s own perception – not watching an historical reconstruction, but entering a continuum of thought and feeling.
We deliberately sought a certain visual tension. I asked João Pedro not to film as a professional cinematographer, but as an amateur – to shoot from the heart rather than the mind. If he felt an impulse to move closer, he should zoom in; if the camera drifted or trembled, that was fine. We embraced those imperfections, because they reveal emotion. That tension enriches the film’s emotional subjectivity.
One of the main goals was to avoid the feeling of jumping between different times and types of archive. Of course, the texture changes, but once you’re in the story you forget these small differences. I hope broadcasters and distributors understand that we also need new approaches and narratives; we’re all a bit tired of the same portrait format. Emphasising subjectivity is something I hope can work for audiences.
One of the main goals was to avoid the feeling of jumping between different times and types of archive.
Dimitra Kouzi: Cabral often insisted that liberation could not be complete without the liberation of women, and that every person, man or woman, should have equal opportunities to advance as a human being. How did this aspect of his thinking influence the way you approached his story in the film?
Miguel Eek: A Guinean historian once told me that Amílcar Cabral was light-years ahead of his contemporaries. Since I first read him, I’ve felt that many of the struggles he identified remain unresolved today, which makes him profoundly relevant. He led a struggle in a territory marked by inequality and by deeply rooted tribal, social, and gender customs. He staked everything on mixture and diversity. No one was excluded from spaces of power or responsibility.
He brought women into positions that had previously been reserved for men. In the film, we see women learning to use rifles, training, marching, and dancing alongside men. I’m sure this was extremely difficult to realise in practice, given the social structures of the time. The fact that we still live in societies marked by hierarchy, bias, and privilege shows how radical and necessary his ideas are.
Dimitra Kouzi: In shaping a portrait of Cabral’s private and public selves, how did you balance the intimate with the iconic – the lover, the poet, the militant – without romanticising or diluting any one aspect?
Miguel Eek: Until 1966, Cabral was almost unknown on camera. Very few people filmed him. After the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966, he became someone the press and filmmakers wanted to approach. Before that, we could only offer his subjectivity; we had some photographs, but his moving image is largely absent. After 1966, his image grows across different spaces and cinematographies. The film also evolves: from a figure who is hidden to one who increasingly appears in meetings and international contexts.
It was tricky to address viewers who already know Cabral and those encountering him for the first time. The political ideas had to be developed enough to convey the dimension of the thinker. Translating those ideas into images was one of the great challenges: how to say enough but not too much; how to avoid drowning in words and remain visual and emotional. The balance lives in the tension between Cabral speaking from the heart and Cabral speaking from the mind – the politician who liked to call himself “a simple African man.”
Dimitra Kouzi: What is Cabral’s political traction today – his relevance in a world of rising authoritarianism and disinformation?
Miguel Eek: During the years of developing and producing this film, I kept wondering why Cabral affected me so deeply. Why did this distant guide from Africa resonate in a young Spanish filmmaker? I couldn’t answer for a long time, but I think it has to do with our current lack of inspiring leaders and with the public’s disaffection with politics – a theatre of posturing rather than a commitment to the common good.
In Cabral’s words I found what we may be missing in contemporary politicians: real conviction. Times like these require decisive choices, and you can’t always know how major changes or revolutions will end. Cabral still inspires because the problems of the 1960s haven’t been resolved: power, social justice, and the many forms of colonialism. Decades ago he pointed to issues that remain painfully current, and the clarity of his expression makes both his words and his life contemporary.
In Cabral’s words I found what we may be missing in contemporary politicians: real conviction. Times like these require decisive choices, and you can’t always know how major changes or revolutions will end. Cabral still inspires because the problems of the 1960s haven’t been resolved: power, social justice, and the many forms of colonialism. Decades ago he pointed to issues that remain painfully current, and the clarity of his expression makes both his words and his life contemporary.
Dimitra Kouzi: I imagine that also kept you with the film for 12 years.
Miguel Eek: Yes. Over those 12 years I made five other films, and I was often afraid that when financing finally arrived I would have lost Cabral’s inspiration or the energy to continue. Surprisingly, every time new support appeared, I reconnected immediately – even though my situation had changed. I grew as a filmmaker through this process. I began almost like a first-time director and finished with eight films behind me. I learned to navigate complexity.
Cabral’s armed struggle lasted ten years. This film took more than ten years of work – and, as he said, the struggle continues.
Dimitra Kouzi: How has this film affected you?
Miguel Eek: As a filmmaker, the experience has opened up new possibilities for essayistic languages that I hope to continue exploring. Immersing myself in Amílcar Cabral’s world for so many years has allowed me to believe again in certain forms of politics. It has healed a kind of disaffection towards what today seems a largely performative and empty political system.
Dimitra Kouzi: Did you ever have a moment when you felt like Cabral?
Miguel Eek: It may sound strange, but I’ve always been drawn to characters who are misunderstood. Since childhood, I myself was not understood – especially in wanting to make films, and to make them in my own way, which is in itself a kind of utopia. I wouldn’t compare myself directly with Amílcar Cabral but I recognise the same passion and commitment in him that I need to make films. I can almost smell it in his writings. That’s why I’m interested in people who, whether in politics or in art, are driven yet full of doubt. The ideas of doubt, fear, and fragility resonate deeply with me – they echo inside me.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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