Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

When the child Manuel wanders into a garden that is off-limits to him, he meets an unidentified fisherman, and another boy -- the boy is actually himself several years down the road. Manuel experiences three different versions of his encounters in the garden, revealing that fate can have several twists and turns in one's life, depending on decisions that are made early on.

In this story we are guided through the relationship of Amelia and Duarte, two people that felt out of love and are trying to cope with the feelings that come after a relationship has ended.

In order to make some much-needed cash for himself, 65-year-old Portuguese prison inmate Eugenio impersonates a young woman and begins a romantic correspondence with a lonely Portuguese truck-driver living in Boston, convincing him that her tragic life has culminated in financial dire straits so he will send money. At first Eugenio's sister Idalina assists him in creating the character of Maria da Luz. Touched by her sweetness and apparent loving nature, the trucker willingly sends her money. When Idalina starts fearing they will be caught, she backs out of her arrangement with Eugenio who then convinces his young cellmate Vasco to help write the letters and even sends a picture of himself at age seven to "prove" that Maria has a young son. As prison life exacts an increasingly heavy toll upon Eugenio's health, his feminine alter-ego helps sustain him.

Elisa imitates her friend's feelings and moods. She is not aware of her behaviour but her aunt that knows Elisa too well, offers her a trip to Brazil to spend some time alone and work on her project about Brazilian popular myths. In Brazil and all alone, she experiences her first true feelings only to find out that everything she does, a mysterious Lebanese woman has done before.

Through exploring the body as a landscape, 'The Copper Kings' plays with visual metaphors that connect the patriarchal philosophy and process of extraction to the dissection of our own bodies.

From our window one can see a set of the film The Green Years, directed by Paulo Rocha in 1963. This was our starting point: guided by Rocha's gaze, we look back at the places of that film. The successive geological, urbanistic and social strata of Lisbon, besieged by the pandemic that interrupted the shooting, are drawn out in front of our camera, like a contemporary jazz impro from a score written in 1963.

On April 25, 1974, a man walked alone in Largo do Carmo. He knocked on the GNR military barracks door and entered, unarmed and without any escorts. Inside, the Government’s chief, Marcelo Caetano, waited, surrounded by the military and the people. The man who stared at him that afternoon and demanded surrender, guaranteeing his safety, had just led Santarém’s Artillery 1 regiment in taking the capital. Without firing a single shot, he managed to overthrow a regime that was over 48 years old. That was the last step to take and he took it, without hesitation, becoming the unavoidable figure of the day that marked the beginning of democracy in Portugal

When a mysterious train accident forces a man to change his plans, he is confronted with a series of choices. Each decision he makes leads to a different scenario, each one filmed by a different director with a different cast.

Two energies that exchange glances, yield to a passion that vibrates in harmony. Both are transmuted, revealing themselves as witnesses that with a gesture of love it is possible to deserve the world.

When alone with his twin, Lucas is swallowed by his obsession

Lovecraft and Pessoa were among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Cartas Telepáticas is a film, created with AI images, that explores the invisible links between the unique points of view of these two authors

In the remote village of Pé da Serra in the mountains of Portugal, a monk arrives wielding a demonic sword. Before long, the mystical weapon ends up in the hands of the town drunk António da Luz (who plays himself). Together, the drunkard and the sword will have to learn together to fight the encroaching evil.

An ice-cream seller lusts after the female employees in his shop.

Trafaria changes his business to Angola, in search of a more profitable occupation, by shaming the pioneers. There he engages in the obscure social and political environment, from which emerge some characteristic figures - administrators, their wives and secretaries, Arabs, police officers, priests and mercenaries...

Twenty-five years after leaving school, a group of former students decide to organise a reunion. But, contrary to expectations, these "old boys" realise that time has accentuated their differences. The atmosphere is tense, the conversation taut and the old grudges resurface in no time.

Two girls who love each other while living under a homophobic government, trying to stay together in a society that wants to keep them apart.

After the Carnation Revolution, Portugal became a democracy and opened itself to the world. One of its consequences was the spread of erotic and pornographic films. This documentary tells the story of how these films arrived at Theatro Gil Vicente, an emblematic cultural venue of Barcelos.

Sofia lives a strangely isolated life in the old apartment where she grew up in Lisbon. Mariama arrives from Guinea-Bissau, having been hired by Sofia’s mother to help take care of the house and her son. The appearance of Bobô, Mariama’s younger sister, awakens in Sofia the desire to take a stand. The forced cohabitation between Sofia and Mariama forces them to confront their own private ghosts.

The earth, life and death, indifference and affection, abandonment, faith. Words and silence, light and shadow, the endless survival, the inability to love. A trilogy set in 2017, 2028, 2037. Three women of different generations and backgrounds cross paths; their tentative steps to fully exist evoke fragments of stories, bringing real life experiences and events into each character.

When a football agent acquires the rights of two young Mozambican players, he tries to transfer them to Benfica, his favorite club.

The film tells the story of Martin, a child of nine years, who one day disappears from private school where he studied. Police mounted a major search operation across the city to find him. All hypotheses are possible: What happened?

"ÉVORA" follows the story of António Évora, an actor retired due to a health condition. The longing and permanent absence from the stage brings with it a reflection on the times when he was young, the joy of applause and what is to come.

We went to research the conditions of the students in the guerrilla schools in the mangroves. Instead, we soon became ourselves the learners and the first lesson was how to walk. In the mangrove school the learning happens with the whole body.

At a supermarket, Magno watches over boys with backpacks as they go along the corridors. Meanwhile, the night drags on slowly for Bismarck, a cashier.

The story of Jorge, an ambitious hacker with few scruples, which is discovered to divert money from the company where he works and decides to flee. In flight, turns out to have an accident during a snowstorm and, despite being in despair, eventually finding a home.

Fiction feature film about the Douro, its people, stories and suffering. The relations between the lords of the land and those who work it.

A journey through the Brazilian Amazon, guided by the eyes of Renato, a Carioca turned Amazorioca. A reflection on identity, the legacy of an ancestral territory, and the cost of progress. An ode to the forest and the fragility of what remains.

An ex-guerrilla fighter wants to leave and forget the past, but is blackmailed by an old friend, who threatens to turn him in. Pursued by the police, he is eventually arrested.

A trans short film that centers trans stories—by and for trans people, both in front of and behind the camera. Elizabeth arrives in the city with fierce eyes, wild hair, sharp nails, and a suitcase full of fragments of past tenderness. She drifts through encounters with men who, like cigarette smoke, warm the body, fade away, and slowly kill. Each takes and leaves something behind. Elizabeth accepts this cycle, knowing that on full-moon nights she must keep away from beaches, forests, and trousered men. The moon awakens the beast within her—sharp-clawed, born to survive, feeding on her pain. She hides it, distancing herself from flesh when it claws at her skin. But one man comes too close, witnessing her under the full moon, seeing her beast, her besta fubana, in her most fragile state.

Here we meet Leandro, a fisherman who leads an honest life until the day he kills a man who abuses his daughter. Forced to flee, he wanders through the countryside until he is taken in by João Senteiro, the elderly leader of a gang of thieves. Leandro joins the group and tries to save money to escape to Brazil. But when the regional administrator offers a reward for the capture of the gang, Leandro's sense of justice is put to the test once again.

Lazarus de Jesus is the adopted son of a wealthy lady from Lisbon, whom he calls Grandmother. It is she who introduces him to Godfather, a great businessman who takes him as his protégé, and Angelina, the woman Grandma wants him to marry. But Lazarus has other hidden interests, the most important of which is an obsessive fixation on female armpits. When he sees the violinist Maria Pia playing, Lazarus immediately falls in love and starts to live for her, which will precipitate an absolutely unpredictable ending.

The complex relationship between master and servant is explored in director João Botelho's adaptation of Denis Diderot's popular novel Jacques le Fataliste et Son Maître. As Tiago (Rogério Samora) drives his master (André Gomes) through the Portuguese countryside to an unspecified destination, the traveling pair embark on a series of highly philosophical discussions. Flowing with tales of his life in the military and previous sexual escapades, Tiago trades a series of tales with his rapt passenger, including the story of a vengeful spurned lover who plots revenge on the nobleman who rejected her by transforming a prostitute into a society lady and convincing him to marry the tainted bride.

The documentary addresses the stereotypes that imprison both men and women, the prejudice against women at the time and the need to legalize abortion to avoid the damage caused by illegal abortion.

Certainly an outstanding case of beauty and mystery, this short film by Mozos creates a strange alloy of literature and cinema, and not in the way one discipline is a vampire for the other, but rather as if they were the different faces of the same coin, drawn to coexist and repel each other. As if every film belonged to a lonely species, Ashes and Embers shows a unique arrogance as it trembles, somewhat defenseless, with no certainty that the folds of fiction constitute any kind of survival guarantee for such strange objects. Memory and ghosts are two words that are easily said, but in this singular and very refined film they seem destined to become the ultimate goal of cinema, and its most endurable desire.

Paulo works as night security in a deactivated industrial complex. He lost his daughter in dramatic circumstances, and no regrets would console him. He sleeps at Luisa's house and witnesses the repeated transgressions of an unstable neighbour. Everything threatens to crack.

'Figure I' uses a feminist perspective to frame and deconstruct patriarchal techniques of control. This film asks: how was a patriarchal gaze construct-ed, and how has it come to effect biological processes? How have specific tools (like Dürer's Grid) come to shape our technological present and possible futures? Are modern Western scientif-ic/mathematic/technological/medical structures rooted in extractive patriarchal philosophies? 'Figure 1' is composed of re-drawn illustrations of allegorical art historical paintings and etchings, alongside archival footage, Obstetric photography, and rotoscoped animation.

João, a music teacher, tells his students the story of how twenty years earlier he fell in love with Anustchka, a circus performer, whom he left everything for.

Rodolfo Guerra, a young man from the upper class of Rio de Janeiro, has his fancy imported car taken from him at gun point in front of his condo by two men. With the help of the alarm system installed in car and the police, he captures one of the suspects. He will find out that the suspect can also be the victim!

A newspaper reporter comes across a man and woman arguing on the beach, and after obligingly driving the woman around when she seeks him out, he takes her back to discover that the man has been murdered. The woman takes off, but the reporter, after many twists and turns, runs into her on a train. They start a relationship, but he had better pay closer attention to how he got to know her in the first place.

An eccentric marquis, for personal reasons, makes a deal with a man to kill him within six months. But some time later, he meets a woman and discovers that his reasons for being murdered have disappeared. Faced with this situation, he decides to go in search of the man he hired. From this point on, an abnormal, mysterious development begins, in which the future victim desperately pursues his killer.

During a night of humiliation, Raymond lives an inner revolt and a kaleidoscopic journey in a country that is about to collapse.

A touching and tragic real life story about a group of Portuguese fishermen who get caught in the middle of a storm in the Tejo river (Lisbon) and struggle to survive.

Xavier returns to Lisbon after a military stint, determined to lead a meaningful life, only to find his world closing in on him.

A deep reflection on the moral evolution of humanity, individual progress, the fact that we are not alone and the possible consequences of a near future, combined with the predictions of the Brazilian medium Chico Xavier.

Rui Sequeira, a former fighter in the Colonial War, resident of a small village of Alentejo, celebrates another anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in the company of his wife and her daughter, the young Sara, with which he has a not so good relationship. On the night of the celebrations, the death of a friend forever alters his live, waking up a whole past long dormant.

A boy in Lisbon, in this Lisbon in permanent renovation.

In a remote island where mourning was settled, a man decreed that there will never be sex or children anymore... The island gets desolate and he decided to send his daughter, Adriana, to the mainland to form a family by natural methods.