Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

The fire’s policy is not the body on flames. The fire’s policy always know what are the flames in a body. The flames are the fire’s policy.

On a small rural property, Pedro wants to open up to the world and learn new things, but he is the son who stayed to take care of the land and the family.

The musician Klaus Volkmann, 30, is the purest expression of someone connected with simple and sustainable ways of life, transport and direct contact with the city and nature. A way of thinking that leads you to view existence as something potentially capable of branching out in any direction.

A serious-comic look at drug use and abuse and its effect on families in Cabo Verde.

Bigfoot is captured in the forest and thrown into the city, where he has a relationship with a woman, from the result of that encounter The Little Bigfoot is born. A furry boy different from all children, and who cannot fit into society, thus begins a journey in search of his father and the forest.

Antonio Botto and Fernando Pessoa, two renowned Portuguese poets, exchanged fictitious love letters. Botto wrote under his own name, and Pessoa signed as 'Manuel de Andrade'. But as time passed, these letters gained a new level of importance in both poets' lives.

Based on Noiserv's songs, a Portuguese musical project played by David Santos, is told the story of three characters with different ambitions. These are told through memories and dreams during a concert film that could be the soundtrack to daily life.

First work of José Neves which portrays the artistic personality of Jorge Molder, focusing on the figure and photographic work of Molder in the preparation of his exhibition presented at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999 where he represented Portugal. The title comes from a previous exposure Molder and an inscription on the door of his photo lab, where part of the film's action is concentrated.

Maria a young girl living in Portugal in the late 60's, is left alone by her husband who is taken to the colonial war in Africa on their wedding day. In an environment of traditions and taboos she tries to deal with her love and loss at the same time she tries to find her own voice.

Gisela is a student of Fine Arts and nurtures great admiration for her teacher, Mestre Ávila. One day Gisela and her boyfriend visit Ávila's atelier in Sintra. Then the couple faces complicated and unusual suggestions from the teacher.

Heirs of quilombolas need to conquer the regularization of lands that were owned by their ancestors.

A group of Amazon must defend the riches of the Veropa Fair from attack by a Bio Pirate.

A woman deals with feelings of loss through her connection with nature.

Between 1969 and 1974, Manuel Vicente designed and built a house in Cascais, for the Weinstein family. From the street, The Weinstein House is an almost blind façade, covered in stone, from which an abstract bow window protrudes. This window, along with the house’s deep-set entrance, adds a central touch of colour and mystery to the composition. Shaped as an “L”, the house opens to a small backyard, thus creating a more private dialogue with the garden. The formal, yet paradoxically unconventional, plan of the house keeps us almost exclusively in the upper level, an exquisitely lit mazelike space.

A ballerina woman, an old woman who spends her days looking out the window, and a saleswoman in fallen clothes from the clotheslines. All are joined by a thread. All three lead the actions of other characters and the inevitable fate of a woman with her husband behind her.

Role play, based on the children's-youth tale by German-born writer Ilse Losa, 'The Blue Flower'. Filmed in the Alfama neighborhood, with the collaboration of residents of Rua da Galé, this is a story of friendship in a neighborhood, between children, an old lady and some jugglers. With the circus participation of Teresa Ricou.

Small sister's obsession for her elder sister turns into madness and ends up with a tragedy.

What do we find when we search for what is hidden? Luís Neves Real (1910-1985) devote his life to Cinema and to Maths, at the same time he appear to try to delete his path. Asking what a biography truly is, we reveal a part of this mysterious man's journey.

A fictional documentary about the acceptance and understanding of the artistic deconstruction of ideas and themes that are rooted in a certain collective imagination of our society.

What is it like to sing a culture one doesn’t know? Cantadores de Paris comprises three Portuguese, an Italian, a German and six French, and is dedicated to cante alentejano. We brought members of the group to Serpa to blend them with local groups.

A young married couple lost at sea is struggling between hope and despair.

The world population of captive axolotl has had enough of the aggressive electric lights of their aquariums. Communicating via wireless waves and watching anime telepathically, they decide to develop eyelids to shut their eyes, reclaim the agency of their bodies and encourage empathic communication. Alice dos Reis’ Mood Keep imagines this collective moment of rebellion and resistance of the endangered salamanders.

A tale of terror about a man, a cat and a lot of blood.

This film shows the LGBT homeless people in the city of São Paulo as they are; how they live, think, relate to each other and society. It is also addresses the views of opinion leaders on the issue, as public officials, NGOs, academics and politicians, thus highlighting how this population is doubly marginalized by society.

A poetic documentary that approaches the existential conflicts between the drag queen Allice Bombom and her creator, Alexandre Loyola.

Every year, over a thousand people go through a gender transition in Brazil. Transparents is a documentary short from Red Cross Brazil that brings real stories of four Brazilian transgenders and what they expect for the future.

Urban Haunting with Roberto Piva was part of the 1st DOC-TV: Program for Promotion of Production and Broadcasting of the Brazilian Documentary, which was called by Imaginary Brazil. The program is a documentary about the life and poetry of Roberto Piva, a charismatic and contradictory urban figure that portrays in his verses or chaos that he observes life in the city of São Paulo. Roberto Piva emerged in the São Paulo scene of the 1960s and shows how his life is completely linked to the poems he made.

Recording and editing of the homonym ballet, choreographed by Olga Roriz, for the Companhia Olga Roriz.

Portrait of a tannery in Beira Alta and of its workers. The film follows the lives of Carla and Lúcia, the only female workers left after the departure of Patrícia, whose disappearance is the subject of much talk among the workers and serves as a metaphor for the future of the factory after the economic crisis that stormed the country.

A young man, alone in his apartment studying, witnesses strange events that begin with the television that insists on staying on.

Considered the first Portuguese abstract film. In the already difficult category of fantasy, in fact this production marks an extraordinarily prominent place, since its production, both technically and artistic, denotes qualities of knowledge, taste and patience, which can hardly be found together in the same individual. The film begins by showing us a painter who, in his pursuit of art, ends up experimenting with a mixture of representative drawings of figurative art and others of abstract art. Vasco Branco carried out an important experiment in the field of cinema without camera. The second part of the film, exactly where the fantasy develops, was made with drawings open to steel-tipped film, then directly colored in watercolor and guacho.

Three siblings with different gender identities and sexual orientations bring us into their world during São Paulo's LGBT Pride Month. We learn about their relationships with each other, and how they work to overcome rampant homophobia and transphobia that exists in Brazil.

April 26th, 1974, the first night after the overthrow of the Portuguese fascist regime. A man comes to a small room in a boarding house carrying only one suitcase. Suspicious but tired, he ends up falling asleep to suddenly wake up with the phone ringing insistently. On the other end of the line, a voice makes fun of him repeating everything he says.

To have or not to have control of our future… that is the question.

A man living the wanton life in the city of São João del-Rei repents from his sins after a supernatural encounter, directed by Sergio Ratton

Miguel, a lonely boy, wanders around in his daily routine, while trying to understand the moments of his life spent with a girl, with whom he is obsessed. These peculiar occasions begin to torment him, but he does not seek an explanation for them.