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CODENAME: ANGOLA

OPERAÇÃO ANGOLA

By Diana ANDRINGA

PERSONA NON GRATA PICTURES - as PROD

Female director - Completed 2015

In 1961 around 60 students from the then former Portuguese colonies – among them the former presidents of Cape Verde and Mozambique – evaded Portugal clandestinely, to escape the oppression from the Portuguese dictatorship’s political police, to join the African liberation movement.

- Year of production
- 2015
- Genres
- Female director, Documentary
- Countries
- PORTUGAL, MOZAMBIQUE
- Languages
- PORTUGUESE, ENGLISH, FRENCH
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 120 mn
- Director(s)
- Diana ANDRINGA
- Writer(s)
- Diana ANDRINGA
- ISAN
- 0000-0006-15EE-0000-D-0000-0000-Z
- Producer(s)
- Tathiani SACILOTTO (PERSONA NON GRATA PICTURES (PORTUGAL)), António FERREIRA (PERSONA NON GRATA PICTURES (PORTUGAL))
- Synopsis
- In June, 1961, around 60 students from the then former Portuguese colonies – among them the former presidents of Cape Verde and Mozambique, Pedro Pires and Joaquim Chissano, and the former prime-ministers of Angola and Mozambique, Fernando Van Dunen and Pascoal Mocumbi – evaded Portugal clandestinely, where they were living, to escape the oppression from the Portuguese dictatorship’s political police, the PIDE, thus avoiding being draught by the military or joining the liberation movements. The collective escape was carried out with the support of the World Council of Churches and the active participation of an ecumenical organization based in France, the CIMADE. It were young American Protestants who, following CIMADE’s directives, drove the fugitives from Lisbon, Coimbra and Oporto into France, across Franco’s Spain, where eventually they were arrested. The documentary Operation Angola – the code name given to the mission – retraced that journey, with two of those American Protestants - Charles Roy Harper, “Chuck”, who drove them in Portugal, and Bill Nottingham, who drove them in Spain – and the Angolan Miguel Hurst, an actor, son of one of the couples who participated in the escape - Jorge and Isabel Hurst – giving us, along the way, descriptions made by several other fugitives in interviews that took place in 2001, at Cape Verde.