Luanda, Angola, 1990. Ndalu is a normal twelve-year old boy in an extraordinary time and place. Like his friends, he enjoys laughing at his teachers, avoiding homework and telling tall tales. But Ndalu’s teachers are Cuban, his homework assignments...

Upon his death the famous Angolan composer Faustino Manso left seven widows and 18 children. His youngest daughter, Laurentina, a filmmaker, tries to reconstruct the late musician’s turbulent life.

In a crumbling apartment block in the Angolan city of Luanda, families work, laugh, scheme, and get by. In the middle of it all is the melancholic Odonato, nostalgic for the country of his youth and searching for his...