Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Salazarist propaganda piece on the organization of fishermen in Portugal's Estado Novo regime.

What can go wrong before the premiere of a play? Everything! "Peça Por Peça" wants to show the other side. The side without spotlights, without funding, where everyone despairs and hopes that everything will go well on opening night. Will they succeed?

Four childhood friends go on vacation to a village.

The arid and spacial environment is the setting for this sacrifice. A lost tribe in an outer planet, both physical and psychologically, they worship their God, blinded they will carry out their ritual, sacrifice the animal and incorporate it. In this metaphorical world time has infinite dimension, the acts are perpetuated and the cycles are repeated.

A brief encounter between two friends. The two reflect upon their loneliness, regrets and handicaps wondering if they've made the right choices in their lives.

David's traumatic pet loss is taking a toll on his mental health. We follow him on his grieving process that mostly consists of drinking all day and wandering the streets looking for his deceased cat, Berlim. This short film was made for the 48 Hour Film Project.

Film commissioned by Lisnave. Shot in 16mm

A journey in real time on the Douro Line, the rail link with the greatest tourist potential in Portugal and which wants to be recognized as a World Heritage Site. Running mostly along the course of the river itself, this documentary puts the viewer in the driver's seat, showing the almost pristine landscapes of the upper Douro, through a view that until today has been exclusive to the railwaymen who travel the 171.5 kilometers of the route between São Bento station (Porto) and Pocinho (Vila Nova de Foz Côa). Along the way, we cross three World Heritage Sites: the Historic Centre of Porto, the Alto Douro Wine Region and the Côa Valley Rupestrian Art Sites.

New short film by João Mendes Pinto

Gisberta Salce, called Gis by her friends and family, was a Brazilian trans woman who was tortured for days and at last brutally murdered by 14 young men in Portugal in 2006.

Violeta applies her art to create possibilities of seeing the world she lives in. A Brazilian woman seeking, by unusual ways, to get warm through her queer community during Lisbon winter.

Fernando lived most of his life as a merchant in São Tomé de Negrelos, where he met the love of his life, Mariazinha. His life changed and Fernando died with a broken heart.

The island of Pico, Azores as observed from the neighboring island of Faial. Recollections of Vitalina Varela, a sunrise, flowers in darkness, the top of the mountain, and the landscapes taken to get there. Homage to Markopoulos, cutting frame by frame, gradually, the principal images are discerned.

One hundred years after Portugal joining World War One, the narrator starts a quest to know more about his great-grandfather Francisco Nobre, who fought in the trenches in France. A group photography, where no one seems able to identify his great-grandfather, serves as a starting point to find out who was this man no one seems to remember.

Starting from a feeling of passion and nostalgia, and all the emotional charge that is linked to the practice of any performance sport, this film demonstrates not only the beauty of solo skating dance and its techniques, but also the work and effort required to obtain the required results.

A young adult has a deadline to deliver work. However, throughout the story, he loses himself in time playing video games on the console. The deadline gets closer and closer to the limit, but the character continues to play in chains, literally, through arms and hands that come out of the television and grab him, in a difficult internal struggle.

There are infinite places to travel in the subconscious.

This is the story of an orange gecko. Although not very different, this gecko was excluded by its kind because of its color. Abandoned on a stormy night, the gecko finds shelter in a strange frog, in which he forms an unlikely friendship.

Another night in the life of a young man in search of anaesthesia.

Born in a body that we don’t feel like ourself is a big challenge that anyone is not prepared for. However, the willpower to feel good and complete is the key to overcoming any obstacle. Filipe, a 21 years old transsexual boy, is this force of nature that was born to inspire us all, transgender and cisgender. With an open heart, he tells us about his process, while showing us a little bit of his day-to-day.

An animated short set to Lanea's music.

“Time is that which ends. Time is limited time experienced by a sentient creature. Sentient of time, that is – making adjustments to time in terms of what Korzybski calls neuro-muscular intention behaviour with respect to the environment as a whole..." - William S. Burroughs. As a time indexing device, it's capabilities are limited to a finite quantity of space over which it pairs images to time codes. However, a strange element disrupts the circuit, a ghost, a Thing, an imperfect double which overcodes the space that the device travels. So, a time accident specific to this technical apparatus is created where two different temporalities compete for the same space, the electronic limbo where a temporal chimera coalesces.

After another monotonous, tiring and repetitive day of class, two students from a school on their way home, start a conversation at the bus stop to reflect on whether what they do at school and in their everyday life is really useful, and how long will daily repetitiveness be present in our lives and will everything we do generate results in the future or is everything we go through just a waste of time.

From a human point of view, a mountain is a barrier and a place of passage. Mountains have always been natural frontiers between territories. Nuno Escudeiro collected stories in Briançon, in the French High Alps, and in the Susa Valley, in the western part of Piedmont, and to these he added home movies from the Superottimisti Archivo di Film di Famiglia.

Ethnographic film

Ethnographic film

Ethnographic film

Ethnographic film

Ethnographic film

Ethnographic film

Ethnographic film

Pedro occupies a bankrupt shopping center, where he lives haunted by his lack of future. The temporary stay of a new girl in the town is going to change his condition.

A 16mm film by Joao Maria Gusmao + Pedro Paiva.

"Visited by the Light" presents Fatima as a supernatural event. It narrates the apparitions of a Lady, brighter than the sun, Our Lady of the Rosary. Film from the exhibition "Fátima Luz e Paz".

Artur is forced to leave his country due to the war in Ukraine. Despite is long connection to Portugal, the adaptation to a new routine is one of the hardest things he has ever had to go through.

On a hot summer afternoon, life unfolds, shadows grow and the wind blows. Two children play without noticing that time advances relentlessly, theirs, the one of the creatures, the one of the earth, and the one of the imagination. This elastic and layered time reveals itself in its traces, marks, and elements, allowing us to learn more about earth and its inhabitants. Five narrators accompany us in this excavation that is intended to be infinite, revealing time and its marks.

Four friends have fun on the beach, while sharing stories that revolve around their experiences of not shaving.

“Baba” spent 30 years of his life working in Saudi Arabia while his daughters grew up in Cairo. Much of their relationship was created and preserved through videos exchanged over the years. When they are reunited, none of the family members completely manage to abandon this form of communication, as if trapped in the logic of exile.

The cycle of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter seasons is suddenly interrupted by the storm and psychedelia.

Filipe is a 75-year-old shepherd. Accompanied by his dog Flech, he walks with his poetry, his flock of goat and sheep on the harsh and majestic slopes of the Serra dos Mangues. In this rapidly changing territory, he is the link, between past and present.

After a night of heightened feelings, the tension between two friends leads to consequences that make it impossible to hide certain shortcomings.