Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Chantal Akerman and Pedro Costa meet in a movie theatre.

“Paisagem Submersa” revisits the submerged places in the waters of the Vouga River, which, according to popular belief, “always goes after what it is entitled to”. From the memories and voices of Cidália, the Marias Madalenas, as well as of Manuel and José, the stories of the past of two neighboring places, ever further apart, come to life.

Every day of my life / in the center of the yard / I know that everything will come together

Juju is a young influencer very well known in Instagram. But her brother dreams about unmasking her before a legion of followers. Is everything fake on the net?

Não Me Cortes O Cabelo Que Meu Pai Me Penteou is a collage of two traditional tales present in the anthology of Traditional Portuguese Tales organized by Carlos de Oliveira and José Gomes Ferreira; The first with the same name and the second called "A Dona Maria". The starting situation is one of extreme cruelty, typical of traditional tales. A mother kills her own daughter, who is then reborn as a ghost to (not) marry the prince.

Based on the concept of crossroads, the short film "Encruza" addresses issues that go beyond black bodies. In an interconnected way, the narratives are constructed in the encounter of the characters. The elucidation of poignant conflicts are the ends of this crossroads that culminate in this great celebration that is the street carnival in Lapa carioca.

alternate realities

The story of a planet where people of different colors cannot mix. Stop-motion animation made with chocolate.

In the Summer of 2004, I traveled across Portugal to shoot my project: a road-movie about a country that can be crossed in six hours from north to south and just one hour and a half from east to west. The landscape I passed through was the post-Euro 2004 Portugal, with the provisional government of Santana Lopes about to take office. It is a country that still seems like the idea we all have of "our homeland", but which actually no longer corresponds to reality and is becoming almost unrecognizable, as in a postcard.

The LGBT activists resisting Bolsonaro's Brazil. Marielle Franco, a Brazilian LGBT and human rights activist, was killed in March 2018. Her widow, Monica Benicio, continued her fight for better treatment of the poor, the LGBT community and black Brazilians. The case of her murder has still not been solved and, as the police investigation drifts, Monica is a plunged into a new crisis: the probable election of Jair Bolsonaro.

A suit and tie dressed gang plays Ska.

A surreal journey of a displaced spirit as he wanders through the temporal landscape of a quaint ancestral village lost in the mountains.

Marvin Sullivan, an elderly man, decides to escape the hustle and bustle of the city and goes to a deserted island in search of peace and quiet. Happiness takes hold of him, until he discovers that he is not alone, triggering a very unlikely relationship.

Following the routine of Roseli, the film aims to expose the adversities that impregnate the daily lives of black women from the outskirts of São Paulo who struggle to provide sustenance not only for themselves but especially for their children.

The rapid turning of a light draws a circle. In the space bound by its line unravels an archive of postcards sent between the island of Madeira and the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique. The figures carved into the Knife by the Sap of the Banana Trees circulates between a fictional colonial memory, and science-fiction.

Short film by André Marques.

A woman sells her work to the most depraved sexual fantasies in the virtual space. But everything is preferable to the reality of his days full of pain and loneliness and M becomes the super operator of the largest pornography company on the globe.

Romaria is a documentary that explores the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Health, in São Pedro de Castelões. It portrays pilgrims of faith, of commerce, of music, and of everything that remains afterward.

Film by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnec.

After his phone runs out of battery, Chico, a young boy, tries everything to contact his first date.

Short film by António Palolo.

A lonely mantis ears a strange sound in the forest. What it encounters will change its life forever. Louva a Deus means in Portuguese mantis, the insect, but it can also mean ‘praise God’, because of their arms.

A mirrored self-interview, across time (a diptych with current images and those from the beginning of Vasco Araújo's career) and across myth (he appropriates the story and words of Maria Callas to tell his own).

Delivery of the packet "Pátria" to the Colonial Navigation Company. The sound of the film has been lost.

Feature film by Pedro Neves.

"Little thriller short story directed by me with the help of my students from Escola Profissional Agostinho Roseta, classes LXtm17 and LXtm19. All of a sudden, everybody dies, in only one minute."

A young man reflects on his relationship with the place he grew up in, and the filmmakers that shaped him.

An audio-visual exchange, conceived as a kind of blind date, between a collective of artists who create analog moving images, based in Lisbon, and a group of artists who explore sound, scattered throughout Latin America.

A woman finally walks away from a love that is no longer there. With the wound still open, on a deserted beach, she finds some comfort in the words of a stranger with similar scars.