The Saudade of the Portuguese of Touraine told in a documentary

On the terraces of Nisa cafes, it is common for a Ridellois to cross a known face. And even several. Sometimes they are even neighbors. Between this city of Portugal and this part of the Touraine located around Azay-le-Rideau, the links are strong, marked by the arrival after the Second World War of workers who came to lend their arms to the industry, the building, the market gardening … or even the manufacture of camembert boxes in the Leroy factory. But they have never forgotten the city of their origins.

It is through the prism of this territory and the figure of Augosto who, all his life, has multiplied the round trips between France and Portugal, that Jean-Louis André tells, based on these Touraine examples, a wider panorama. “This is the wonder of the documentaryhe explains. We say so much, even much more, of things when we start from a particular case that when you embark on a large fresco. »»

“The Portuguese are a bit like salmon”

He went to Tours, with the AC Portugal football club, at La Riche and Joué-lès-Tours to meet the members of this community. The documentary maker shows how these children and grandchildren of Portuguese are integrated into local life – Philippe d’Almeida, president of AC Portugal recalls that there are more than 800 business leaders from Portugal in Touraine – while having sought to continue a culture and traditions carried by their ancestors. A culture that sometimes no longer exists exactly in the same way as in the homeland of origin, morning of nostalgia.

“It is very special immigration”said Jean-Louis André, passionate about these “Stories between two worlds”. She is “Apparently non -conflictual with the country of origin and there was a perpetuation, the fact that the Portuguese come back to it regularly, without warning to choose” Between France and Portugal. Even if, the evenings of football match at the top between the two national teams, it is not always easy to know who to bear.

“The Portuguese are a bit like salmon”, said in the documentary Louis Palheta, consul of Portugal in Tours. Even if they are attached to their new land, many of them regularly return to the scene of their family cradle. Augosto represents all this. Jean-Louis André followed him in his daily life in Touraine. He returned with him, for the first time since his departure, in front of the accommodation he occupied with his parents, in Langeais, on his arrival in France. “We had left a house, we found ourselves in a cave,” He recalls in front of the summary troglodytic housing that welcomed him when he was very small.

The history of the change of an industrial society

He also accompanied him to Nisa where he decided, like a heartbreaker, to sell the family home. ‘Augosto a tout’ To tell the broader story, takes up Jean-Louis André. “Artisan in the building, he has always kept this link with his country of origin. His children are interested in it, without talking about the language … It’s a bit of a kind of embodiment of the saudade all by itself. »» A feeling, to the airs of delicious nostalgia, invented by the Portuguese to qualify it expressly.

Jean-Louis André discovered these bridges between the two regions ten years ago, during a visit to Nisa. “When you are there, we tell you: “Men have all left in Tours,” he says. But in summer, there are lots of cars registered 37. I found this game of mirrors interesting because it allowed to speak of the integration of Portuguese in the 1960s and 70s in an iconic region of France with its castles in the Loire. »»

This film also tells, in its extension, “The change of an industrial company, that of the end of the Thirty Glorious Years”concludes Jean-Louis André who is preparing a new film on this same theme around Georgiana Viou, the first Franco-Béninese starry star in France, after having made a documentary on “the Arab gate” in 2019.

“Saudade, here and there”, a documentary here Center-Val de Loire, directed by Jean-Louis André, broadcast on Thursday May 8 at 10:45 pm on France 3 and available on France.TV.