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In Caxinas on the northwest coast of Portugal, when the fishermen go off to sea, their wives stay ashore tending to the work at the docks and at the fish market. They are the managers of the family business on land, and the guardians of the family’s success and survival.

A distinct departure from the seedy noirs and gritty social realist dramas of João Canijo’s earlier work (SAPATOS PRETOS, NOITE ESCURA, SANGUE DO MEU SANGUE), this venture into an observational hybrid documentary places his frequent collaborator Anabela Moreira, “playing herself,” among of a group of women who do the obrigação or “women’s work” for their families’ fishing businesses. With her, we accompany them in their daily lives and reflect on the perseverance, vital trust, and, above all, love, that sustains them, their work and their relationships. It is a love which, to Anabela and to us, can seem so familiar and so simple, yet so elusive.

“Canijo finds the perfect romance of “they lived happily ever after” at a fish auction, among galoshes, aprons, pout fish, water splashes and the music of Zezé di Camargo. The director’s sunniest film.”

– Ana Margarida de Carvalho, Visão

“Regarding SANGUE DO MEU SANGUE, much was said about “unconditional love.” Here, love is the very condition, sine qua non, that guarantees the functioning of a social structure, and Canijo’s film, basically, is about that, or is a portrait of that. It is love, because, in a mixture of pragmatism and fatalism, it cannot be anything else. It is fulfilling “the obligation,” according to local terminology. A job, therefore – maintaining the house, raising the children, taking care of the fish when it arrives, managing the operations on land. Women as the “blood of the blood” of that community.”

– Luís Miguel Oliveira, Public