Sandgrains

Short Synopsis

Sandgrains is a documentary about the local effects of global fisheries on the small Cape Verdean village of Ribeira da Barca. We explore this through José Fortes, a former footballer returning to his birth place to understand why the beach by the village has disappeared.

Description/Treatment

Sandgrains is a feature length observational documentary shot in HD. 

The past as a footballer of our lead character José, and what the beach meant to his career, is a red thread in the film narrative.

- Background.

350 miles off the coast of western Africa, the Cape Verdean archipelago provides ideal fishing grounds for sought after pelagic species like Yellowfin tuna. Although international fleets scour the open ocean, the small local wooden boats are unable to venture out far, so local fishing vessels go for a smaller coastal fish called Kavala. Recent declines in Kavala may be linked to international fleets illegally hauling live bait for long line fishing, causing those dramatic drops in catches that coincide with sightings of foreign boats, according to local reports. 

José, is a typical Cape Verdean; from a population of 1.5 million, he is one of the estimated 1 million people who’s migrated from the islands in search of better opportunities. The islands have little fresh water and therefore arable land, meaning that around 82% of all food must be imported. This perilous dependency on imports and the resulting high prices on consumer goods has driven locals to begin the wholesale destruction of their own land: much of the scant forests have already been logged, and now the last remaining resource, sand, is rapidly vanishing. Due to the diminishing viability of fishing for income, locals subsist by selling sand to the construction industry, barely gaining enough to survive. Furthermore, the vanishing beaches of Cape Verde dissuade tourists from visiting parts of the country, depriving businesses from a vital source of revenue.

The film topic is located in a current hot debate around subsidies of fisheries, the dismal state of the global oceans, and access to food as a fundamental human right. 

- Main protagonists; more on www.sandgrains.matchboxmedia.org. 

José Fortes is our main character and the idea for the film originates with him. He was born in the village of Ribeira da Barca, where much of the film is set, and he spent much of his childhood playing football on the wide sandy beach by the fishing boats. After migrating to Sweden as a boy he began playing for IFK Gothenburg FC and was seen as a rising star, until when training with Leicester he sustained injuries that put an abrupt end to his footballing career. He now works with orphaned migrant children in Sweden, but maintains a good connection to his footballer past. Because of his career, he was unable to return home for over a decade, and when he did the beach where he had started playing was destroyed. 

Ja, José’s cousin, gathers and sells sand from the beach of Charco next to Ribeira da Barca. She started when she was only nine years old to help her family and now she has a daughter of twelve to feed, sometimes risking her life in the strong ocean currents as she dives for sand. 

Nelson is a fisherman of Ribeira da Barca; he and his wife have two kids to sustain through fishing. At thirteen, because of domestic problems, he decided to leave school and start his life as a fisherman. In those years there was an abundance of fish and it seamed like a safe career choice. Now, he doesn’t even go out at sea every day because it is simply pointless in some periods of the year - he and his crew would end up spending more that what they would make. “Trying to survive on fishing alone is a daily struggle.” 

Tata is the aunt of José, Nelson and Ja. She is 84 years old and still vividly remembers the old times when Ribeira da Barca used to have a sand beach, plenty of fish and a fresh water well in front of the house. “You can’t compare the situation now with what it was before. There was so much fish that we had to work drying and salting it from early morning to late at night to not throw away the surplus! People had less comfort, but at least they could get plenty of food from the sea and they lived on a beautiful sandy beach.” 

José Ramos is our leading expert on fisheries development and management in Cape Verde. He is based in Mindelo on the island of Sao Vicente, the main port of the archipelago. He has a vast knowledge of Cape Verde’s waters and resources, as an esteemed professor at the Cape Verdean National University, but he also has strong opinions on what doesn’t work, who is ruining his country and the complex political and economical influences behind it. 

Isabella Lövin is an MEP for the Swedish Greens, former journalist, and author of Tyst Hav (Silent Ocean) - an acclaimed book about EU fisheries policy and the state of the oceans. 

Tcheka, childhood friend of José, is a key figure in a musical movement that fused the original beat of Batuque to the strings of guitar. The music, and subsequently Tcheka, represent a turning point in the evolution of the archipelago’s musical identity. His songs are inspired by the life and ways of Ribeira da Barca and he has returned to the village for recording a new album.  

- Access. 

The Fortes family is extended and influential in Ribeira da Barca - main location of the film. Their main occupations are fishing, and in the absence of that gathering sand, which are the main topics in Cape Verde. We thus have complete access and support of the Fisherman’s Association of Ribeira da Barca and their boats. We also have access to the beach where they gather sand through Ja and other Fortes family members as well as other connections made while shooting the trailer. 

- Visual approach. 

We follow José as an observational team as he tries to figure out what happened to the fish and the beach by his village. We rely on the dramatic and beautiful landscape of Cape Verde as well as the colorful characters to enhance the visual approach. This is contrasted by stark winter in the section where José travels north to unravel the root of the problem in the EU. Comparisons of our visual approach may be ‘If A Tree Falls‘ and ‘Requiem for Detroit’.