31ª Mostra Internacional de Cinema

One hundred letters written by Portuguese women in 1958 were found by chance by a collector of books and old documents. He did not read them because he believed they were love letters. The letters were written in answer to a circular sent by the mysterious Movement of Support to the Dictatorship of which there is no reference in history books. The original circular was never found, but, by the answers at hand, it can be seen they were an invitation for women to mobilize in the name of peace, of order and, above all, in defense of the Savior of the Country: António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970). In all of the letters, these women express the gratitude and admiration they have for the dictator. But, as though the need to talk spoke louder, among stock phrases, there arise, at times, fear, sadness, and isolation which Portugal lived in the fifties. The letters are signed by a seamstress, many elementary teachers, housewives and some wives of men who are important to the regimen. Confronting these women with the ghosts of the past, and with unpublished material on file, Letters to a Dictator is a disturbing plunge into the obscurantism that dominated Portugal for over fifty years.

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