The Malaga Ship is the story of a human trafficking vessel and the Brazilian-American whose personal connections to the ship’s history compelled him to share its story. This is a film about Maine’s and Brazil’s roles in the Atlantic slave trade, historical echoes across time and continents, ancestral reconnection, creativity, and the importance of illuminating the dehumanizing global industry of enslavement.

We follow storyteller Antonio Rocha as he discovers synchronicities between this ship’s history and his own life. The Malaga was built in 1832 in Brunswick, Maine, close to where Antonio lives today. This ship later transported enslaved Africans to and from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the same city where Antonio was raised by his European-descended mother and his father, whose ancestors were from Kota and Benga people (in present-day Gabon, West Africa). The story of this ship—built near his current home in Maine, operating out of his childhood city in Brazil, and transporting enslaved Africans like his father’s ancestors were—was a story that Antonio knew he must tell.

In the 1840s, Malaga transported captives, most of whom were teenage children. The fact that slave trading was illegal in the Atlantic at the time did not stop Malaga‘s owners from participating in this highly profitable industry. From this specific ship, we branch out to reveal the global story of the enslavement of Indigenous African and American people. Slavery’s impacts are ongoing. There is no better time than the present to learn from the past and improve our collective future.

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