Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

A woman victim of domestic violence looks back at the years when she was married, recalling how difficult it was to stay afloat.

During the late hours of the night a form tries to fall asleep. Struggling to maintain control, it gets trapped into vicious cycles of abstract madness, visually and audibly growing into a visceral and bizarre conflict between compression and decompression.

The beginning of a story about a little girl in red.

X’mas wish-list that two brothers are writing is leading to them not wanting to share their desired toys once they get them for Christmas, so Santa Claus gives them one new toy, for both, for them two to share and play together with, so as to teach them a lesson in fellowship.

Often underestimated as such, the anti-colonial wars of liberation were also large scale educational endeavours. Consider the educational strategies pursued by agronomist Amílcar Cabral and the PAIGC. Among those, the Pilot School to form “the best students from our schools in liberated areas, and [to be] integrated in our educational system for the liberated areas”.

Occupied Territories is the story of a plunder told by the people of the mountains of Caramulo. People speak of their life after the violent occupation and forestation of their community lands by the State in 1941. They speak of misery and emigration, of the ruptures and wounds imposed by the violent course of history, they tell of their resistance to this expropriation. They also have the memory of a time when communities were built in a collective perception of the territory that surrounded them.

Youth, a period of life that is purposely wasted, but full-heartedly enjoyed. Following a young Portuguese girl's hair dye endeavour, the director remembers her own libertine youth. A dialogue beyond time, space and culture unfolds the truth of being young.

Short about the village of Cascais, Portugal.

Two boys who just left high school meet in a party and begin to grow a unique relationship.

A group of veterans from the Portuguese Colonial War reunites today. Among songs and memories, the past takes over them.

The hands question what they can have in common with hands covered in cement, in mud, in dust, dressed in blue construction gloves and yellow cleaning gloves. Those hands that, instead of building houses, repeat images, stretch sounds, construct films.

Within a day, a journey with four destinations. At each stop, we meet an elderly woman who lives alone, somewhere between the freedom and the solitude of her house. The time that perpetuates or changes the routines of these women, the fears that imprison them, and the dreams that set them free.

A scenic material that gives answers to what it is like to be a man at the expense of a woman or a study of the masculine and feminine, the show discusses how the masculine and feminine roles are undergoing accelerated transformation.

Two girlfriends and their gay friend try to come up with a plan to seduce a delivery man they like.

Belo Horizonte, 2018. An encounter of bodies that share, each one in its own way, desires, stories, fears and existences, everything with the city in the background. Youngsters formed by different social experiences occupy the city and create their own life narratives.

Découplage narrates the last day of relationship of two friends, in which the future of both is uncertain.

It is a hot summer in August 2016. In this ephemeral sea of unforeseen events, passions, changes, voids, escapes and deceits, Rodrigo – between his personal discoveries and uncertainties about the future – is surprised by the outbreak of a set of fires in Madeira Island. What will happen to him if the wind shifts?

I decided to resist and at a certain point I decided to stay alive, because there was a time when I wanted to die, but then I thought I should stay alive without making any concessions to them, because someone had to denounce it one day.

A story about 3 species in isolation.

A woman breaks up with her boyfriend. She wants to be alone in her apartment. Methodical and obsessed with organization, she has an scheduled time to cook, exercise and watch TV. However, some unusual events give her the impression that she is no longer alone at home.

The historical events of the french invasions that took place in the three portuguese municipalities of Mealhada, Penacova and Mortágua.

A woman and a man had their first night together. But what they both want may not be the same.

The video comprises body exploration with red light and slow motion to convey to the viewer the idea of strength, power, fear and the concept of the underworld. Using electronic music, upside-down plans and timed cuts, I wanted to convey a self-image of surreality and non-conformity with reality. The title, “Hades”, makes explicit reference to the God of Death and the Underworld in Greek mythology, and serves as a guide for the planned sensations of agony, pleasure, revelation and space-time detachment. This is how I see myself, this is how I think I should be.

Brazil and God were the motto. My God! How many Gods were there before? Between life and death, a stricken man elaborates the possibility to overcome. There's a chance to breakthrough by reconnecting with lost principles. This is part three of the "Brasil Profundo"

A trip to South America, told through memories and several anonymous documents. The effects of the landscape among the subjects that share it are strange and able to separate a group of friends.

Through succeeding childhood photos, a girl begins to remember her personality, which in contrast to her sister’s, already strayed from assigned gender roles. The narration is addressed to her mother, as if attempting to establish a communication between different universes. The camera follows as the girl, now a teenager, enjoys herself accompanied by her friend and other night characters in the village, breaking gender and sexuality conventions, where the freedom of the body, and consequently of the soul, entails lightness.

According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham was 100 when his son Isaac was born, and Sara, his wife, was no longer fertile. Isaac was one of three Israeli patriarchs, having died at the age of 180, after a peaceful life in Canaan, which would have been a lot shorter had his father sacrificed him on Mount Moriah as a young man. Fábio Silva revisits this precise famous biblical episode in “The Death of Isaac”, offering an alternative version in which matriarch Sara’s calls for divine intervention were not enough to make Abraham back down from his test of faith and obedience to God.

A child, amidst the noises of pain, prefers to shut her ears to the world.

A homeless couple occupies a house whose owners are absent. There is a mysterious connection between them and the house that prevents them from leaving it.

In 1927, Luís Wittnich Carrisso, professor at the Coimbra University, travels to Angola to study the local flora. Second episode of a series of 4 documentaries on the Botanical history of Portugal.

The end. Grete, beach personality from Canoa Quebrada, is dead. His story goes back in time, moments in his life reveal his trajectory until the moment he makes the fateful decision to leave Circo Maximo and venture out alone. The beginning of the end.

Nuno Bragança. Author of three novels: "A Noite e o Riso" (The Night and Laughter), "Directa" and "Square Tolstoi." A collection of short stories: "Estação" (Station). And a posthumous novella: "Do Fim do Mundo" (From the End of the World). Screenwriter of "Os Verdes Anos" (The Green Years), the inaugural film of Cinema Novo Português, and co-director, with Gérard Castello-Lopes and Fernando Lopes, of the film "Nacionalidade: Português" (Nationality: Portuguese). A Catholic from a conservative family, he was a member of MAR (Movimento de Acção Revolucionária). He joined the Revolutionary Brigades of Carlos Antunes and Isabel do Carmo while working at Portugal's permanent representation to the OECD. On February 7, 1985, he died at the age of 55 in a hotel room in Lisbon. Nuno Bragança, who was he?

A tribute to author’s mother shortly after her death, at the age of 96. The film remembers her through excerpts from earlier footage and attempts to hold and capture the mysteriously elusive feelings and warm gestures she left behind, which still linger in memory today.

Created on the initiative of the architect Nuno Portas as Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Development of the First Provisional Government, the Local Ambulatory Support Service (SAAL) was a housing assistance program promoted by Resident Associations. The Portuguese Architecture of 25th of April is SAAL - an unparalleled movement in the history of architecture thinking, which served as an example and discussion for many other projects at an international level.

Casa Na Comporta is one of four films commissioned to different directors for the Portuguese architecture national exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

At the Nova Esperança wool factory, Maria da Graça stands out, studying for her own efforts.

Joana and Samuel's relationship has a specif routine.

"I write to have a mountain of books when I die." Psychiatrist António Lobo Antunes is one of the most internationally recognized Portuguese writers. His novels, usually settled in Lisbon, are published in prestigious publishers in several countries (Christian Bourgois, Random House, Luchterhand). In Nordlund's film, the characters and scenes from his books constantly interrupt the writer's speech. Lisbon invades his home. The voices of the characters impose themselves to the writer's house. António Lobo Antunes compares his writing to a watercourse that leaves to freely find its way.

From a certain idea of Rousseauian rural purity, “Colmeal” is settled in the small homonymous village located in Riba-Côa, also known as ghost village, due to the effects of the rural exodus and the inland desertification. In an allegorical way, quite worked on the natural elements and the sound elements, the film tells the story of a young man who lives isolated and who obsessed by a woman who comes from the city to spend her summer vacation. Gradually, the young man tries to overcome the inability to deal with his emotions, seeking to discover himself, emotionally and sexually. Márcio Laranjeira and Sérgio Brás d’Almeida are debutants in Curtas Vila do Conde and propose a return to the themes of growing pains and transition to adulthood, with young people trying to find their place in the world and to define their personality, especially in context of social and loving relationships.

In a bucolic place on the island of Flores, the most remote of the Azores archipelago, a lonely man lives in complete isolation, without any kind of human interaction. With him, just a black cat and a spotted cow. His daily routine is lived between his house and a lighthouse that apparently is, or has been, in his charge.

Portuguese documentary regarding the early punk scene in Portugal.

The Brazilian upper class portrayed by an artist in a critical mood.

An urban history of fear.