Written and directed by Gabriel Martins, On Behalf of My Son (Vicentina Pede Desculpas) begins with a deceptively simple gesture: Vicentina travels across the city, going from home to home to apologize to the families of people whose lives were destroyed by her son. From this premise, Martins constructs an extraordinarily dense drama about grief, responsibility, guilt, forgiveness, and the limits of human connection. The Portuguese title is particularly significant—Vicentina Pede Desculpas, literally “Vicentina apologizes”—because the act of asking forgiveness is not merely the narrative device that moves the film forward; it is its moral and emotional centre.