“Magnetic Grandmother” gives visibility to marginalization and acceptance, starting from the progressive point of view of a grandmother, Margarida Oliveira, who lived with her uncle Joaquim, who was gay, in the 1960s and 70s.

Margarida Oliveira, the co-author and director's paternal grandmother, serves as a starting point, as a muse.

A woman who, in the 1960s, moved from Mangualde to Sacavém with children still in her arms and who quickly became a door-to-door milk seller, and later a fruit and vegetable seller, in a square in the same city.

Nicknamed a “man-woman” whenever she traveled alone, or with the help of one of her children, to Campo Grande (Lisbon) to buy and/or carry goods, she survived and rebuilt herself under the weight of the double responsibility that society attributed to her, on the threshold of what was—or was not—expected of her, just like so many other women.

Years later, many of these grandmothers also accepted, without preconceived notions, different conditions of divergence in their community – because they too, at some point, were under social scrutiny for daring to transgress established norms.

It is this legacy that we are directly or indirectly celebrating today, paying homage to Margarida Oliveira and all the other grandmothers who, unknowingly, faced social stigmas without fear.

We celebrate these women of immense strength, who always received and embraced the pain of others with open arms, after having experienced exclusion themselves.