Paper short abstract:

In Yvonne Kane and Cavalo Dinheiro, Margarida Cardoso and Pedro Cost , in different ways, work the idea of nostalgia through the concept of excess like different narrative of the national body.

Paper long abstract:

The cinema of Margarida Cardoso and Pedro Costa relate to the past through very different cinematographic aestethics and languages.. However, they both converse with the space of the former African colonies. They debate the colonial past through the category of nostalgia, although with different constructions and results. This paper starts from the interpretation of both filmmakers' last films, Cavalo Dinheiro and Yvonne Kane, and proposes a reflection on the concept of excess, following Baumann (2001) and Mbembe (2016). In both films, the past, populated by those who exceed the mainstream fiction of the Nation (both Portuguese and Mozambican) and by the ghosts of what is removed (the former colonial relationship and the recent struggle for independence), builds an idea of memory that feeds mainly on the margins of history (migrants, women) and geography (the Lisbon suburbs and Mozambique peripheral spaces), thus reweaving the interrupted dialogue between the various parts of the national body.