Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

A father and a daughter live in isolation. During a day we peek into their lives and their distinctive perception of what surrounds them. Between the cruelty of the day and the quietude of the night, we find the different perspectives that define the world.

Antónia didn't play with dolls, nor did she learn to read and write at the age when children go to school and don't usually sell their labor power. She experienced the harsh social inequalities of Salazarism. Used to toiling from sun up to sun down, work is still her "sport" today. She regrets that those who miss the dictatorship are not forced to experience in the flesh what fascism was like... She tells us all this while her hands prepare the dough for the Easter cakes, scented with aniseed, with the zeal of a master.

A documentary that shows a body in social and family isolation, but the distance is not caused by the coronavirus, but by being a transvestite. Renata Carvalho is a character of herself, her voice tells us the historicity/transcestrality of her body and the structural transphobia.

From 2000 to 2007, Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona worked on the staging of Euclides da Cunha's epic book, Os Sertões, which describes the 19th Century War of Canudos in the Brazilian "sertão"(backlands). The result was the pentalogy of plays: A Terra (2002), O Homem I (2003), O Homem II (2003), A Luta I (2005), and A Luta II (2006). This first play is a carnival opera, the actors are the earth, the vegetation, the wind, the animals, the rivers, the drought. It reveals the most intimate secrets of nature, that also vibrate in the human and trans-human arteries. This work enriched by the experience that the subsequent works brought gains an updated insight into the human interference in the environment. Destructive power is proportional to financial power, and the discussion about the way space gets occupied was brought to the forefront, including the real-estate boom that surrounds today not only Teatro Oficina, but the whole world, now hotter and more arid.

Hans is addressing his first love, Arief, as if he could hear him despite the distance and time. This heart-breaking love letter guides his steps in search of Arief, while Agnès, Hans’ feminine double, reappears like a ghost. The Hans/Agnès duo roam the streets of Lisbon in a phantasmagorical and desperate quest, to remind us that it is impossible to escape one’s past.

O Outro Teatro proposes a look at the independent theater manifestations that came in the wake of the pioneering gestures of Teatro Experimental do Porto.

Carlos is a famous journalist at the age of 55. His wife, Ada, is the opposite of her husband, a woman with a very active social life, and she is happy and seductive. One day, Carlos accidentally opens a text message on Ada’s cellular telephone. A new world reveals itself before his eyes when he discovers that his wife is seeing another man. With the help of his friend with whom he goes to live, Carlos discovers a universe of virtual lovers and electronic adultery.

The story takes place near Lisbon, in the mid-16th century. Bela, an adopted young man, tries to find his place in a family that is free, but trapped in a world where each shadow allows imperfections to shine through.

In a small Portuguese village, a tragedy occurred. An old lady is found dead in her garden, surrounded by snakes, while her 40 year-old daughter, Lurdes, fled without telling anyone. The gossips in town about the mysterious destiny of this house are spreading fast...

A French sailor circa 1850, disembarks in a desert Atlantic island, and discovers a woman who had survived for many years her husband and brother, who have died while searching for mysterious valuables. The young couple discover paradise, and its end.

Cruz and Queimado are two criminals who have to dispose of a dead body. An innocent fisherman will alter their plans and their lives permanently.

In Alhambra, between the mountains and the river, a train runs through the village. Oscar, forty-eight years, has worked for the last twenty-fifth years in the same factory, and finds himself awaiting for the resolution of the court on the application of the insolvency of the factory where he worked. With the suspended production and the unpaid wages, Oscar and his colleagues continue to appear daily to work hoping that they can keep their jobs.

“I think my film represents above all the proof to those who want to understand and accept it, that poetry can’t be filmed, that it is useless to try” - João César Monteiro

Inspired in the Play "Auto da Barca do Inferno" by Gil Vicente, the only Portuguese playwright recognized in the universal history of theater, the story of "When The Angel And The Devil Cooperate" talks about a bet: if the world ended, where would most of the humans end up? In Heaven? Or in Hell? On Earth, the Angel and the Devil come across with the story of a father, Parvo, who blames his daughter's death on Onzeneiro. While Parvo looks to get his revenge on Onzeneiro, this one tries to get rid of the murder charges by paying of the judge. They both gather with their accomplices at the same place, a brothel, without knowing about each other's presence. Here alliances are formed and broken with the help of peculiar friendships, represented by the characters of "Auto da Barca do Inferno".

According to Sigmund Freud: “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways”. “Umbral” materialises the moral dilemma of whether there is a cause and effect link between trauma and criminal behaviour.

A film about the incommunicability of two worlds.

Lena's uncle died and left his niece estates in Alentejo as an inheritance—with one peculiar condition: that by the end of the year, someone must steal her most valuable possession. If she doesn't want to lose her inheritance, Lena really needs a thief...

Rute is a teenager like so many others: she goes to school, she has swimming lessons, she likes watching films and specially she loves to be online. Rute is almost always on her phone or using her computer. But Rute has a secret nobody knows: Rute is receiving hateful and violent messages. Who is sending these messages? Sara F.

In 2016, Edgar Pêra released The Amazing Spectator, a playful investigation into cinema’s disquieting essence that had everything from negative film images of boobs and positively splendid interviews to a donkey hand puppet. The film and an accompanying book formed his PhD thesis. But as so often with him, projects turn into obsessions – especially when there are masses of notions not pondered, thoughts not elaborated upon. And so KINORAMA - Beyond the Walls of Cinema was born, a stand-alone continuation of The Amazing Spectator that looks at cinema’s future in cyberspace and, accordingly, perhaps the end of its enslavement to figurative representation, the 'stupid sacred in narrative cinema' (to use a Pêra’ism), realism and artificiality in 3D cinema, and many other aspects.

Entangled in crime since childhood, Zeca Mouro experienced probation, reform school, and jail through expediency and marginality. His life is thus defined by crime and atonement.

Constantino works as a keeper of flocks during the day and as a keeper of a museum during the night. He works continuously since he has nowhere to live. Aurora passes by him every morning and end of the day. One day she is brave enough to talk to him.

How happy and proud they are those two ladies back in Oporto! Thanks to them, their bright nephew can study medicine in Lisbon and may already have become a doctor. Little do they know, not only Vasco wastes all his time drinking, dancing and picking up girls but he has just failed his final exam! And in that same day, he receives an email from the two aunts announcing their visit to Lisbon! Will he be able to make them believe he is such a good student as they think?

A sad and strong people living in the huge plains of Alentejo. Their endless struggle for bread, their nostalgic, bewitching songs and their daily toil to turn a dry, barren land into golden wheat fields.

An essay on love, friendship, sex, identity and art, led by the gaze of a group of young people who struggle with reaching adulthood.

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 stream of consciousness from Brazil’s underground flows straight into the heart of the city’s street carnival. In between the masks and the make-up, the young, naked and new bodies and a spectacular firework display, people come into view who have undergone a transformation that makes it difficult to clearly ascribe them to any gender.

An old woman is woken in the dead of night by a phone call. On the line, a stranger fights his insomnia by dialling random numbers.

Tó-Quim is a seemingly ordinary teenager, until the day he joins a band of black metal, the hand of a friend and Anita knows the drummer for who ends up falling in love.

In Argentina over 8,000 people die in traffic accidents every year. Behind each of these tragedies is a flourishing industry founded on insurance payouts and legal loopholes. Sosa is a lawyer who tours the A&E Departments of the public hospitals and the police stations in search of potential clients. Luján is a young doctor recently arrived from the provinces. Their love story kicks off one night when Luján and Sosa meet in the street. She's trying to save a man's life; he wants him on his client portfolio

The film follows Tarcísio Amaro, a retired miner living in the vicinity of Serra da Estrela, interweaving thoughts on the past and the present, and looking at the decline of rural life in the deserted Portuguese hinterland.

The film INSERT was conceived has part of MEMOGRAMA by Filipa César, an installation that approaches the history of Castro Marim, a village in the southeast of Portugal, known for salt production and as a location for banishment and forced labour. The translation of sin into salt. The film INSERT creates staged images on the landscape of this place and offers a set for the announcement of a forbidden encounter.

São José Correia recites the watershed futuristic poem Tabacaria from Álvaro de Campos.

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.

In an empty house, we see the memories of a home, from those who once lived and filled it with joy and love.

Her name is El - a name that sounds like a letter and makes the young androgynous woman a kind of representative of her generation. A generation that is overwhelmed by all the possibilities of the world, globalization and the digital stream. Lisbon is a promise of freedom, independence and an intense life. But the question of meaning brings doubt into everyday life: what if I were happier with someone else or called another place home? When home no longer feels like home, the search becomes routine. When El meets Kay after a break-up, in the midst of her search, their story together begins. Time, space and emotions implode in "Baan", blurring Lisbon with Bangkok, past with present.

Four voices and their visions of Guimarães, cradle city of the Portuguese nation and European Capital of Culture in 2012.

Miranda do Corvo, 1933. Tomé, a young worker haunted by guilt over his betrayal, is chosen by his colleagues for an important mission in the union's struggle against the Estado Novo. Faced with this moral challenge, he confronts not only the real dangers of police repression, but also his own demons.

Beladona was the greatest star, or so she thought. Careless of her rural property, she lived by night countless adventures. From one such nights in the arms of a stage and movie producer, she begot her dear Lilás. Alas, six minutes after birth, the boy was taken from her and declared dead - due to the intrigue of the producer, who didn't want to recognize the child as his. Taken into custody by a surrogate mother, twenty years after the child grew into a man, who starts his education in the very fado (folk song, also meaning destiny) tavern where his real mother is. Beladona is still an attractive woman - and drama is round the corner.

On the 24th of June, 1958 the philosopher and anti-nuclear activist Günther Anders was flying to Japan to take part in the Fourth World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs and for Disarmament. He recollected this experience in his book “The Man on the Bridge: Diary from Hiroshima and Nagasaki”.

An imagery odyssey through the rise and fall of heroism. Was there ever a rise?

Bianca and her mother meet again in Porto after many years. Together, they will hit the road with their stripping show, running after lost time, impossible love and strange fantasies.

Documentary about the life, convictions and career of Portugal's first and only female Prime Minister. Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo believed that "women can be a force for radical transformation of the institutionalised irrationality in which we live. The multifunctionality of their existence, the diversity of the planes on which they move, their daily lives give them a special capacity to find a new understanding and a new effectiveness for governance in the midst of complexity". Unlike many other women who have the same conviction, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo turned her life into a praxis of her own belief.

A love triangle set in Lisbon between German singer Nina, bullfighter Garrido and local girl Branca.