
Lemon Tree
A fictional character’s body is assembled from memories embedded in an abandoned space.
“I went up the lemon tree to pick up the yellowest lemon. I found a raven and he gave me an egg—there was a story inside it. I sat down and listened.” In a five-minute stop-motion film, we are taken along decades of memories, fears, and tenderness. This monochromatic work, in a shady yellow and blue, is a metaphor for the passing of time and highlights the fondness one gets from good memories, which tend to remain in an abandoned house or under an ageing lemon tree.
The tragedies along the way are never more significant than having had something to lose: a father, a bird, a home. But are these ever truly lost? Maybe if one takes an egg from the last remaining nest in the tree, it will all come back. One just has to believe.
Margarida Moz is a short film programmer at IndieLisboa and head of Portugal Film, the Portuguese Film Agency that has been discovering new voices in Portuguese cinema and projecting Portuguese films worldwide since 2014.