Valter Hugo Mãe

In The Meaning of Life we will take part on a journey throughout the world to question our existence through the inquiries of a young Brazilian, with a rare hereditary disease with no cure.

Portugal, Brazil and Cape Verde. Countries linked by the sea and the culture of nostalgia. The film travels across three continents and finds characters marked by absences produced by events that transform the history of these countries. Like fascism, colonization, slavery, dictatorships and leaving never to return. The culture of saudade is the thread that connects conversations by the sea.

Filmed over seven years, the documentary follows Valter Hugo Mãe as he writes his novel “A Desumanização”, across journeys through Iceland, Brazil, Portugal, Colombia, and Macau. A visual meditation on solitude, loss, and belonging, featuring appearances by cartoonist Laerte Coutinho and Icelandic composer Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, mentor of bands such as Sigur Rós and Björk. The film is part of the project “The Meaning of Life”, which director Miguel Gonçalves Mendes has been developing for more than a decade: a series of nine features built as a kaleidoscope of contemporary figures, in which the filmmaker invites us to reflect on what makes us, as humans, unique beings.

The vast possibility of global-scale connections, made possible by the internet, gives rise to different notions about what community is. This documentary brings a vibrant and intrinsic theme to all our actions today: the links between the real and the virtual, and the intertwining and complementarity of these two universes.