Tagline:

Selma and Duarte occupy an abandoned building in Lisbon together with others, reinventing the notion of home through communal living, art, and resistance, while defining their own relationship.

Synopsis:

Selma and Duarte, two young artists and students, occupy an empty building in search of a place to sleep, study and create, a defiant response to a city reshaped by speculation, tourist pressure and eviction-driven policies. Inside, they attempt to build a community where art, affection, mutual care and resistance intertwine.

The film follows the full arc of this occupation, from 2020 to the eviction in 2023. Built on long-term proximity and trust, the camera moves through assemblies, repairs, rehearsals and the quiet hours after meetings, when exhaustion and doubt surface. Everyday gestures become political acts: organising kitchens, fixing doors, negotiating coexistence. After the eviction, the group struggles once more to find a new building, begin again, in other configurations: girls want to occupy without the men.

Through it all, Selma and Duarte's bond quietly transforms. Once lovers, the experience of shared precarity, conflict and endurance leads them to redefine what they are to each other, arriving slowly at a cumplice friendship.

The film is anchored by a musical piece created by housing activists and residents. Like a Greek chorus, the Kantata lifts private moments into collective voice, weaving together memory, solidarity and the imagination of a different future.

Uncertain Roof asks who has the right to remain in the city and what it means to build a home in a system that treats housing as a commodity rather than a common good. 

Project representatives:

Bruno Cabral  (Producer)

Claudio Carbone (Director and Writer)