Aurelia Natalini, Frithjof Heinrich, Niklas Doka

Porto, Portugal‘s second largest city, has more than 1500 years of history. It is located in the north of the country on the Atlantic coast and attracts many tourists with its idyllic atmosphere. One eats ba-calao in quaint taverns, walks at the mouth of the Douro or enjoys the famous port in the medieval old town of the picturesque portos. However, Porto has a second face that hides behind the facades of the houses from the gaze of the visitors and behaves as controver-sial to the bustle of the city as the title of the documentary „A Sea of   Islands“.
Ilhas (Islands), so call the Portuguese homes that exist exclusively in Porto and thus represent a unique phenomenon. The gardens of the mansions were then converted into makeshift shelters for workers of the factories and housed thousands of people in tiny rooms without sanitation. They fled the country to find work in the rapidly expanding city. Remnants from the age of industrialization, which still exist today and shape the life of the city, because in 2017, still 8% of the population live in these dwellings, so nearly 30,000 people. Many of them do not have their own toilets even in the 21st century, let alone their own bathroom. Conditions that one can barely imagine in Europe and which remain invisible to the an-nual crowds of tourists. The documentary illuminates the situation from different perspectives and shows what it means to live there. Residents talk about life in the Ilhas, while experts illuminate the problem from the outside. How does the city deal with the phe-nomenon? What role does tourism play in the current situation and what is the future of the Ilhas?