Threads of Life

Every year, adults seek out the archives of the CASA Foundation (Centre for the Socio-Educational Attention of Adolescents, São Paulo, Brazil) searching for the dossiers from the period they spent (as children or teenagers) in public orphanages. What is it that makes these adults try to recover the threads of their lives? Between 2009 and 2013, more than 50 dossiers were analyzed, along with interviews, about men that were sheltered, between 1947 and 1974, in the Batatais Agricultural Institute for the Underages (IAMB/SP). Records; truths (?); the right to biographical memory; stories of “abandoned families”; accounts of work and care experiences; present bonds among “ex-underages”; the dialogue between old photos and a visit to the now-ruined IAMB building, guided by one the interviewers, all compose this documentary.