Margarida Cardoso, born in 1963, grew up in Mozambique, where her father was a soldier during the war. Before establishing herself as a major filmmaker of Portuguese cinema, she worked as a screenwriter and assistant director. Most of his films are shot in Africa “to which I always return.” Her work questions colonial history, relations between Europeans and Africans, past and present. With the documentary Natal 71 (1999), which evokes the anxieties and interrogations of Portuguese soldiers in Mozambique, she breaks the silence of society and her own father about the war. This unveiling of a hidden past continues with The Murmuring Coast, her most famous film, Leopard of Tomorrow in Locarno, presented in Venice, and winner of awards in Portugal and international festivals. Many of her films focus on independent Mozambique. Kuxa Kanema (2003) tells the story of the birth of national cinematography; then she portraits one of its artisans, the filmmaker Licinio de Azevedo (2010). Yvonne Kane (2014) investigates the ghosts of struggle and independence. She has shot documentaries in Cape Verde and Angola. Understory (2019), a feature-length documentary that explores the traces of the history of cocoa on the island of São Tomé, was created with her original footage for Banzo, a feature-length fiction film she shot in 2022.