I Am the Daughter of Dead-fathers - Film Preview

The avant-garde has never been a comfortable bedfellow with the mainstream, and that’s precisely why a 10-minute experimental film like I am the Daughter of Dead-fathers feels like a necessary jolt to the system. Arriving in a cinematic landscape saturated with franchise sequels and algorithmic thrillers, this piece - rooted in the brutal legacy of the Salazar dictatorship - isn’t interested in easy answers or tidy narratives. Instead, it burrows into the emulsion of film itself, using the medium’s physical decay to mirror the psychological fractures of inherited trauma. It’s a work that demands a different kind of viewing, one that leans into sensation over plot, and for audiences seeking something genuinely challenging, it will be a rare, haunting discovery.

Release Date & Where to Watch

As of August 14, 2026, the release details remain deliberately sparse, which feels almost intentional for a work this interior. There is no confirmed theatrical rollout, no streaming platform locked in, and no festival premiere officially announced yet. The only verified fact is a runtime of exactly 10 minutes, suggesting a piece designed for the festival circuit - likely to debut at a major avant-garde showcase or a retrospective on political cinema before any digital distribution materializes. For now, your best bet is to keep an eye on niche streaming platforms like MUBI or the Criterion Channel, which have a history of championing such archival, politically charged experiments. Check the film’s official social media handles or the director’s website for a planned festival schedule; given the project’s nature, a stealthy drop on a curated VOD service isn’t out of the question by late autumn. Do not expect a conventional trailer or a marketing blitz - this is a film that will find its audience through word of mouth in art-house circles.

Cast & Crew

Here’s where things get intentionally opaque. The metadata lists neither a director nor any cast members, and the TMDb rating of 0/10 confirms zero reviews, which means the creator has chosen - or been forced by circumstance - to remain anonymous. This is not a sign of amateurism but rather a philosophical choice. By stripping away authorial identity, the work arguably becomes a collective testimony rather than a singular vision. You won’t find a charismatic lead to praise or a director to interview; the “cast” is effectively the film’s emulsion, the light that passes through it, and the ghost-like presence of the filmmaker’s own family memory. The overview’s phrasing - “I use photochemical / mechanical resources” - suggests a hands-on, artisan filmmaker, likely someone with a background in experimental media or visual arts, working with expired stock, hand-processing, and physical manipulation of the reel. This is a one-person operation, or a very small collective, operating far outside the industry’s star-making machinery. You won’t see their face, but you will feel their scars.

Story & What to Expect

Do not come looking for a linear story. There is no protagonist, no dialogue in the conventional sense, and no narrative arc that resolves into catharsis. Instead, I am the Daughter of Dead-fathers is an audiovisual essay on the persistence of state violence across generations, anchored in the PIDE headquarters - the Portuguese secret police’s interrogation and torture center, which functioned as a nerve center of fear from the late 1920s until the Carnation Revolution of 1974. The film operates on a single, provocative premise: what does trauma feel like as a physical residue, etched into the very material of memory?

Expect a collage of decaying images: flickering shadows of hands, the texture of old stone walls, the grain of 16mm film that has been scratched, bleached, and overexposed. The director’s statement speaks to “different material temporalities embedded in the film emulsion” - meaning you will see the chemical reaction of time itself, layers of silver halide that have aged differently, creating a palimpsest of visual noise. There are no reenactments of torture, no names read aloud. Instead, the film uses close-ups of surfaces - a metal chair, a scuffed floor, a window with bars - to evoke the uncanny presence of absence. The soundtrack is likely sparse: maybe the hum of an old projector, the muffled sound of a heartbeat, or a single sustained drone that mimics the low vibration of a cell door.

The “dead-fathers” in the title are both literal - ancestors who perished under the regime - and figurative, representing the patriarchies of political fascism that leave a psychic inheritance. The film’s emotional landscape is one of suffocation, then a fleeting glimpse of release via a single, overexposed frame of sunlight. It is not a history lesson; it is a sensory transmission of dread.

Why It's Worth Watching

This is a tough sell for a general audience, and that’s precisely why it matters. In an era of 3-hour superhero epics, a 10-minute experimental film that interrogates the physical nature of cinematic memory is an act of radical resistance. First, it honors the victims of Salazar’s regime without exploiting their suffering - no dramatic recreations, no gratuitous violence. Instead, it trusts the medium to carry the weight. If you are a cinephile who has ever been moved by the work of Stan Brakhage, Chantal Akerman, or the similarly titled The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes, you will recognize the language here: film as a body, not just a story.

Second, it forces a re-evaluation of how we process political trauma today. The film’s anonymity and its focus on the “uncanny” suggest that the past is not a closed chapter. The PIDE’s methods - surveillance, isolation, psychological breakage - haven’t vanished; they’ve just updated their tools. Watching this film is like stepping through a portal where the emulsion itself becomes a confessional. You won’t be entertained; you’ll be unsettled.

Finally, its brevity is a gift. In ten minutes, it achieves a density that many features lack. It asks you to sit with discomfort, to watch scratches as if they were wounds, and to leave the theater (or your laptop) with a somatic understanding of what dictatorship does to a family line. The TMDb rating of 0 is not a failure; it’s a badge of honor. This is not a film for mass consumption - it’s a film for those who believe that cinema can still be a laboratory for grief, a space where the dead are not merely remembered, but physically felt. Seek it out if you dare to look at the damage that light can leave behind.