A teenage girl flies up to the sky among the wrecked trees in one of the main arteries of the city of Beira, in the aftermath of cyclone Idai that levelled down Sofala province in Mozambique.

Flávia lights up some candles at home where she lives without electricity. At Torre neighbourhood in Camarate, just next to Lisbon's Humberto Delgado Airport, people have been living without electricity for more than three years. The service was cut in October 2016 due to legal issues and this state of affairs continues to date. 

Rui Rio's defeat in the 2019 legislative elections was somewhat expected. Many polls pointed to one of the worst results of the Social Democratic Party ever. After the defeat, Rio went on to say that the result was not as bad as "many had prophesied and some even wished for". Socially awkward and generally considered a politician distanced from the people, Rui Rio did everything to reverse the polls but to no avail – the results showed his efforts came short to hold the feat of never losing an election for which he was famed for.

In the week of July 2, 2019 in Roda - one among the 15 villages surrounded by the wildfires - Cláudia and many others joined the firefighters to put out the blaze that once again reignited the central region of Portugal.
Roads cut, villages evacuated, and hundreds of emergency operatives on the ground. Once again the flames ignited the anguish all across the center of the country, as the violent fires that first started in the Castelo Branco region were quickly reaching Santarém. A man was rescued from his house on fire after close call. “If it wasn’t for my mother and I, all this would be ash by now”, says Cláudia. 

Beira’s municipal orphanage ‘Os Continuadores’ was left even more destitute after the passage of Cyclone Idai that swept Sofala province in Mozambique. Reparation works, equipment and food were all severely lacking. The orphanage has sheltered children for 44 years. They come from Beira’s neighborhoods and from the sub-provinces of Buzi, Nhamatanda, and Dondo. Today the orphanage is home to 78 children aged 0 to 12 years-old. Most are infants and half are still in the nursery. These children lost or were separated from their parents or family for many reasons. These are also children who were victims of abuse by their own families, children who suffered physical or psychological violence, abandoned children, mentally or physically disabled, lost children, children of inmates, children of drug-addicted parents, and even mutilated children victims of organ traffickers. 

Diogo Varela was born Portugal but he is not Portuguese. He holds a Cape-Verde passport even though he never set foot in Cape Verde. 
He is one among thousands of Portuguese of African descent who find themselves in these circumstances. After serving a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence and having lost SEF’s (Portuguese Home Office) permanent resident status, he found himself living illegally in Portugal. 
Diogo is now reintegrated in society. He has a full-time job, is a husband and a father. And yet something is amiss. His own country does not recognise him as a Portuguese citizen. 
He holds a temporary residency status that he can renew every five years but this is ill-suited to his needs. In 2019 Diogo and his family decided to leave the country and move to Northern Ireland.

According to Bloomberg, Lisbon is now “the most popular real estate market in Europe”. Rents have skyrocketed and in some districts housing rents have gone up by 80% in 2018 alone. At least 10,000 families were evicted since 2016 and many hundreds now resort to illegal occupation of municipal houses to at least have a place where they children can sleep safely. "New Lisbon" is about the stories of these people and the insecurity and dread of not having a secure place to rest. 

In the 1960s, Grande Hotel Beira was known to be the largest luxury hotel in Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently derelict, it is the only home for 4,000 people. After the company’s insolvency the premises turned refugee camp during the Mozambican civil war, sheltering mostly children who lived here in precarious conditions without water and amidst the piles of rubbish. In the colonial era, the hotel had 400 rooms and an Olympic-size swimming pool used by the settler bourgeois families living in the region. Among present-day residents we find civil servants, police officers, fishermen, teachers, but also many without a livelihood and tenants evicted from their homes.

Learning how to bullfight has become increasingly difficult because of the social controversy around this art. The fact that pupils are not allowed to practice with real bulls until the age of 16 makes it more difficult to get the necessary experience to start a career. In schools, trainings are carried with much discipline and respect for the animals, and always in a playful environment somewhere in-between horned-bicycles and mastery. Children as young as six year olds learn how to deal with danger, but they only get to practice what they learn in class in the families’ private events and farms, normally, with a real cow.

Yakutia’s territory is five times the size of France but with a population of less than one million. Yakutia produces 28% of the world’s raw diamonds. Like Mirny or Udachny, Yakutia is an example of what Russians call ’Monogorods’, meaning, cities dominated by a single company. In all three more than 50% of the population works for Alrosa. 
The remote city of Yakutia stands on permafrost and here winters last 7-9 months with temperatures reaching -50°C. The whole setting of everyday living is unique. This project explores loneliness, isolation, and the people’s capacity to adapt to extreme cold and overcome extreme adversity. 

The world is closed at home afraid of the new coronavirus. And so is Andreia, with a small difference: she is used to face what she cannot see. She was born with maculopathy and her sight is severely reduced to 5%, and yet she travels the world every day because of her three-year-old son. Andreia Varela is 27 and got pregnant from a dating partner at 24. She always wanted ‘to be a mother and have a home‘, and so, despite the worry, she grabbed her fate with both hands. People on the street stop and look astonished at this young girl-like woman making way with the cane and the child in her arms. “They make a lot of comments, but many could never do what I do.”

Miguel Vieira does sports since he was 14. But it was only at the age of 20 that he had to face one of the greatest battles of his life: blindness. Miguel travelled to Portugal for medical treatments hoping to recover his sight, but without any success. Eventually, Miguel settled in this country and rebuilt his life with the help of the guide dog ‘Vespa’, his family, coaches, training fellows, and friends. Used to overcome obstacles every day, he became the first Portuguese Paralympic judoka to compete in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. For him this meant “the realisation of an old dream.”