Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

A mysterious character haunted by a pair of hands has to fight for and discover their identity.

Batalha is the most emblematic venue in 'Invicta' (a common nickname for the city of Porto) and one of the most important in the country. It witnessed the entire 20th century in Portugal: born shortly before the regicide, it grew alongside the young Republic, resisted 40 years of dictatorship, celebrated the April 25th Revolution, and witnessed Portugal's entry into the European Economic Community. It survived censorship, experienced various revolutions, and technological changes, but succumbed to the lack of audience, even at the turn of the 21st century. Two decades later, Batalha is undergoing renovations and will reopen its doors in 2021. Will it be ready to face the challenges of the 21st century?

“Saudade” portrays the intimate relationship between Portugal and Cuba, two cultures that are both geographically separated and inextricably linked by the ocean. Visual art and performance merge to express the grounding presence of the earth and its capacity to help us understand our shared humanity across distances. The film asks: What is recorded in the land of the one who leaves for the sea? What does it mean to leave one place and arrive in another, greeting a new land while carrying the old?

In a carousel fair, a gastronomic journey brings together two young strangers. Your night will culminate in a true rollercoaster of emotions.

There are infinite places to travel in the subconscious.

The film documents the insularity of the Azores in a film that balances the sensory effect on visitors with the affection of those born there.

Ethnographic film

There are things that are indescribable and unspeakable when the disasters that affect our lives are beyond comprehension. Certain fundamental experiences seem irreducible to any form of expression. So how do we convey their intensity? How do we put them into words? Here, we’re talking about the war inflicted on the Ukrainians for over a year. Daryna Mamaisur is Ukrainian and currently lives in Portugal. O Fumo do Fogo, somewhere between a film diary and an essay, sketches with admirable reserve a path towards the possibility of communicating.

Ethnographic film

A newly-born harpy discovers herself.

From archival images, an improbable story is woven of a boy who couldn't stop crying, creating both floods and paradises.

Filmmaker Davina Maria and illustrator Dominique Goblet share a fascination for the beach in Ostend. Made up of photographs and illustrations, the film subtly interweaves their respective artistic practices. With a delicate and melancholic tone, Souvenirs d'une journée parfaite celebrates friendship, memory and the fleeting nature of shared moments.

Another day in the life of Julio, after the death of his wife, Camélia. Since that day his life has changed. He is an old man with a lot of life experience, with many memories and experiences. Today, Júlio decides to leave his wife's ashes in their little corner, the place where they were happiest.

Images from my family archive remind me of a text by Borges. Little by little, I transform Averroes into my grandfather, my grandfather into Borges and Borges into me. In this movement, it becomes increasingly difficult to look at any of them without, too, glimpsing all the others.

Daniela, a young woman coming out of a breakup, moves to Lisbon for a few months. Feeling lonely, she starts dating Diogo, a happy-go-lucky guy she meets on Tinder. They get to know each other as they explore solitude, love, and friendship, aware that they will soon part ways.

In 1934 an experiment by an amateur-scientist couple began. Named after a genus of moths, the Automeris Project placed a group of young children in an enclosed forest, leaving them to fend for themselves. On return visits, the couple presented self-made films, accompanied by live music, depicting the outside world. For them, these images were the perfect replica of reality seen in their expeditions. Nevertheless, the films were carefully framed, edited, and manipulated to induce a transformation and provoke the development of a new society.

A young man wakes up in an old house and recalls a ghost from his childhood.

Short silent film.

Shaped by mysticism, resistance, and the voice of revolutionary leader Amílcar Cabral, we take a personal and poetic journey through the anti-colonial past and present of Guinea-Bissau.

UM CORPO DE DANÇA is a proposal for the history of the body, showed through the path of the biggest Portuguese dance company of the 20th century. The documentary follows the rise of dance in Portugal along with the country’s political, economic and sociocultural ongoings as background. It is the story of a transforming body that frees itself from a fascist dictatorship, and of a changing society that opens itself to the world. From unreleased archive images and interviews with several creators and dancers, we follow the path of an extraordinary dance company through the movements and words of its protagonists, from creation in the early 1960s to its extinction in 2005.

War, loneliness, nature, journeys, fallen dreams are some of the recurring aspects in this animated poem on paper.

A kaleidoscopic postmodern collage odyssey, through several different films, set to the homonymous album.

Finding himself at the brink of society, Cecilio, a struggling drug addict, hurdles through an abandoned world while he attempts to reach his strained family who is his only hope for a way back to recovery.

Red Africa relates the history of the influence exerted by the USSR over many African states between 1960 and 1990, working from extraordinary archival footage filmed by Soviet operators. The subtle editing of restored images reveals the hidden agenda of the USSR which, under the cloak of generosity, was aspiring to expand its socialist “paradise”.

In the middle of the Atlantic, Helena rekindles an old friendship with Ceu, an astrophysicist who recently relocated to the Azorean island of Santa Maria to study exoplanets. Caught between the island’s geological inheritance and the vastness of the cosmos, the two friends reconcile with the various space exploration infrastructures that are stationed on the island. A work of science-fiction inspired by the various space resources currently existing in Santa Maria, See You Later Space Island is a loose tale of friendship and endurance.

In the Queluz-Belas area, on the Sintra Line, Edi, Yuri, and Válter are surrounded by crime: gangs, drug trafficking, robberies; situations that have become normal for them. Their time is divided between school and the time they spend together writing lyrics, listening to music, and walking along the Sintra Line. Under pressure from Jay Dogg, the leader of the RXR Boyz, the three boys will have to decide which side of the line they want to be on, ultimately having to make choices that could completely change their lives.

Ficções Sônicas is a sonic imagination of the radio play Pra Dar Um Fim no Juízo de Deus, by Antonin Artaud, immersed in the notion of non-place of diasporic experiences. Triggered by the term developed by the writer Kodwo Eshun, the work brings together the musicians Barulhista, Maurício Badé and Thelmo Cristovam in different musical tracks, dialoguing with the voice of Passô. “It is to make the future vibrate in this ancient text that always had the future in itself. It is an evocation of words resistant to the automation of sensibility. It’s a meeting between aliens.”

Part of Vale do Ave historical context, Woman of my people takes us on a journey through the textile factories and their stories. Conceição, the director's grandmother, tells her personal story, reflecting on the role of women in the factory in the social context of Vila das Aves in the sixties.

In 1911, in Olaias, now a neighbourhood in Lisbon, the Portuguese Republic established itself and imposed the secularisation of the State. Meanwhile, a woman, known by the name of A. Brasileira, the Brazilian, works miracles and her persecution becomes ever more urgent. However, from one shot to the next there is magic at work here, short-circuiting the centuries.

“Wheels” is a film about relative motion as described by Descartes: if 2 objects are moving in the same direction and speed they seem to be still between each other. Inspired by Duchampian tradition, Pedro and João filmed a short chronicle of curved means of transportation in the tropics. Overlaying directly on the negative (camera editing) the feat of paradoxically freezing a moving bicycle wheel, a car wheel and anamorphic depiction of tire, João and Pedro constate that for that to happen everything else must be perceived as a gyroscope.

A reflection on different relations between what’s specifically human and the natural world, by critically discussing the socially-constructed dualistic opposition between nature and culture that is one of the cornerstones of Western rationalism.

France has more than 200 football clubs of Portuguese origin in its amateur leagues. Famille FC reveals aspects of their origin(s), the relationship with the country left behind and the host country, and the inexplicable stubbornness of being Portuguese.

A religious pilgrimage marches in search of a holy place. A miracle is performed and witnessed. The archipelago's fury is appeased. Another prosperous year for the islanders begins. A look at folklore and superstition in the Azores.

Ney Matogrosso brings the repertoire of a memorable tour. Among the songs are compositions of renowned artists with a new outfit and some unpublished successes.