Portuguese documentary filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias , who is the guest of honor at IDFA , spoke to the festival’s artistic director Isabel Arrate Fernandez this week about how she set out to interrogate the repressive methods of her country’s fascist regime through an examination of its archives and footage from the period.

De Sousa Dias, who was inspired to become a filmmaker by the masters of Italian neorealism such as Luchino Visconti, first became interested in re-examining historical subjects by delving into archives when she was asked to direct an episode of a series on Portuguese cinema.

Her episode was on the period 1930 to 1945, during which fascism tightened its grip on Portugal, the start of a four-decade long reign of terror, presided over by António de Oliveira Salazar

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