Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Fine Arts Education

A documentary about a woman from the town of Chandor, Goa. The documentary is a running commentary of her current life in Chandor, as she reminises over her Portuguese-Indian past.

A false diary on a man's journey that, more than just disappear, he aims to be nothing, to become nothing.

A series of brief, evocative scenes capturing the life of a painter—his moments of inspiration, frustration, solitude, and fleeting triumphs. From the quiet ritual of preparing his brushes at dawn to the feverish strokes of creation at midnight.

The story of Boça, a simple and friendly guy from the city of São Paulo, a typical boy from Mooca, but unlucky and living a difficult life. Unlike his father, who is a good trickster, Boça is hardworking and balances his job as an office boy with his college studies and arcade games.

In the 19th century, Hortênsia a fugitive court lady is abandoned at the altar by Isabel a bankrupt princess who decides to live a love story with Jorge, a slave she freed.

A man from a village in the interior of portugal is back to visit the family that is left. But the true reasons for his return are not clear.

The movie Is set in a fairytale village, one lost to old time. This town is on the border between Portugal and Spain. People have lived here for centuries. During the day not much is happening. People who I portrayed are continuously doing the same things. Following the same routine of waiting next to the church, going to the bar for a coffee. But unlike other towns the energy of this village is divided into two parts. As the light starts to settle and darkness takes over the village all of a sudden the mystery and magic that did not exist during the day, knocks on the door of this town. And the viewer finds out that in this village the night belongs to mystery.

A subversive queer musical comedy inspired by Jesus Christ Superstar. Ferreira demolishes one of the ideological mainstays of the Estado Novo: Our Lady of Fatima. - Cinéma du Réel

Musical show by Rouxinol Faduncho, fado singer and former emigrant in Germany, character created by comedian Marco Horácio, accompanied on the viola by Carlos Leitão, on the Portuguese guitar by Henrique Leitão and on the bass guitar by Carlos Menezes, in the auditorium of the Fábrica do Inglês, in Silves.

A study on the uninhabited area of the old railway workers’ district of the village of Setil. The limits in the construction of their history lead us on this journey through the geography of Setil, leaving language behind and plunging into the primary elements. We seek an image of evocation, but also the very construction of the image of the space.

Nara shares a little bit of her rich journey.

PP decides to invest all his family fortune in a new line of production of his new project for a new FAMEL motorcycle, but he doesn’t expect that someone has other plans for his project.

An homage to Pina Bausch.

Attitude is a small detail that makes a big difference. Here’s the time to talk about another side of Coimbra, an Portuguese university city. This is the story of one of the city’s most famous exports ‚ the Tedio Boys. The first of its kind with visibility and, more than any other label, a certain attitude. As a result, the city’s visual landscape changed ever since.

The artist Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, who, on her return to Brazil after several years living in Europe, was confronted with the situation of violence against children, was a central figure in denouncing the massacre of minors in the Candelaria Church (1993). This is a lucid and raw interview interspersed with street footage, living with the reality of abandoned children in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro.

A discussion between a detective and a businessman

Being at home, in our physical and psychological home, can have its risks.

The natural elements are transformed by chaotic external experiences.

While cleaning their late father's house, Joana and Tomás discover strange videos. As Tomás becomes obsessed with their meaning, subtle tensions arise between the two.

90 Minutes Power Nap is a film based on the phenomenon of ASMR. The film seeks to transpose and expand sensations usually experienced individually into a collective context. This term originated on an online forum when several users attempted to describe some feelings of well-being they experienced in their daily lives, such as when they had their hair cut or a book read in a calm tone. Previously, these sensations were described as mental orgasms or brain tingling and were often not taken seriously. However, since 2008, the production and demand of these relaxing videos have grown exponentially. These can provoke a sensation of comfort by listening to a varied sound spectrum: handling objects, manual contact with various materials, whispers, guided visualisations, among other approaches. These soft-textured sounds provoke soothing bodily sensations, convey a sense of closeness, and are much sought after by those suffering from sleep disorders and anxiety.

Short documentary film by António Pedro-Vasconcelos.

The work started through a fascination with reflective surfaces as a way to understand identity itself as something always contextual, mutable, distortable, fragmentary, metamorphic or, simply put, highly reflective and undergoing permanent re-creation. Waves crashing, disintegrating the whole, reassembling and maintaining some constitutive or foundational unity, even for something that is always in flux and taking on new shapes and manifestations. “el camino es una red” (“the path is a network”), unstable, full of rhizomatic connections, something we weave as we journey forward.

Lifeguards, surf instructors, marine biologists, on-call nannies, anxious queer immigrants on their day off. Not everyone at the beach is relaxing.

Driven by rebellion against a government that condemns them to oblivion, a group of university students decide to take their future into their own hands by devising a daring plan: to kidnap a secretary of state, forcing her to expose the dark truths of power. But what begins as an idealistic gesture quickly fragments into a web of tensions and secrets. When unexpected violence results in a brutal death, the group faces the weight of an impossible decision: take responsibility for what they have done or stage a lie to escape the consequences. As the hours pass, the boundaries between reason and madness begin to disappear, the masks fall, and each is forced to undergo a profound transformation—a mutation that will shape them forever. "Mutation" is a psychological and visceral thriller that explores the darkest corners of human consciousness, in a mesmerizing journey where justice, fear, and survival collide in a spectacle of tension and strangeness.

For centuries, the oldest academic-popular festivities in Portugal have been organized by a group of students. They began as pagan, pre-Celtic celebrations, were appropriated by the church and made religious, gained a unique social importance, and became something truly ambiguous—a way for the community of Guimarães to express itself in a loud and boisterous manner. St. Nicholas serves as an excuse for social critique and satire carried out by the community.

It's a stiff neck. An ache in the spine. An embedded thorn. Helena wishes it were all just a memory, but the process continues to drain her. It's as if she's chained to her own heart. Only shards remain.

A couple stuck in a table of a restaurant faces the long hours of the weekend. A short film that explores the limits of warned-out relationships.

An introspective journey through the silent language of architecture, "Sensuousness" presents an evocative tapestry of black-and-white imagery. Each frame whispers the essence of space and form, blending the intimate with the expansive. Inspired by philosophical musings on beauty and the tactile experience of the built environment, the film meanders through interior and exterior realms, accompanied by a serene soundtrack. This meditative piece invites viewers to perceive the subtle dance between light, shadow, and texture, uncovering the soul of architecture in a world of monochrome contemplation.

Alto do Minho sets off from the lowlands to the high season, to show different shades. The before and after, which are, after all, the same immutable Atlantic cycles of the mountainous landscape. And the upper lands. Where the profane is mistaken for faith, such as the past with present times. Alto do Minho is more than a movie, it’s a moving portrait. Glimpses that may bear the epic background of Gance, but that are a pop ethnographic observation, which rises up to the dormant feeling. It freezes up the anonymous and landscapes of popular festivals, geographies in shots with an impressionist editing, impregnated with an underlying randomness.

Two young souls dive into their memories. From this dreamlike state, a party which reimagines the notions of temporality is summoned, together they cross each other in a sensorial experience. This ecstasy allows the union between themselves and question the concept of reality and memory.