The Confederation – The People Make History began its life as a screenplay written in correspondence between two people who had been separated from Portugal by the dictatorship: the director Luís Galvão Teles and the writer Amadeu Lopes Sabino. But by the time the feature was finally filmed and then premiered in 1978, everything had changed in the country.

Part of the cycle Politics of Sci-Fi, this feature-length film (a rare example of the Sci-Fi genre within Portuguese cinema) tells the story of a forbidden love between militants of opposing factions in a hypothetical future where Portugal remains a battlefield for Soviet and American powers.

Displayed along the foyers of Batalha, this exhibition of documents related to the film and its authors explains its development, production and reception, and how the process of making the film reflected the turbulence of its time. From photography to personal correspondence, from PIDE (secret police) files to press cuttings, we trace a development process that spanned a dictatorship, a revolution and the appearance of the first constitutional governments.