Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Two people have a date in the evening.

Maria always lived alone. One day she needs to rent her own room to a student. But living with another person will only add to her own loneliness.

A portrait of the daily lives of young people living in a new-built estate on the outskirts of Lisbon. School is a joke and there’s no work to be had anyway, so the girls try to have fun as best they can. New-girl Eva is very pretty but quiet. The others aren’t sure at first whether she’s arrogant or just shy. Iara and Eva head off to the beach with two boys. The lads turn a couple of abandoned shopping trolleys into racing chariots for them and the atmosphere begins to tingle. Later, they argue with the rest of the group. The other girls manage to get into a club that night but the boys don’t and must kick their heels outside. They’re bent on revenge. They meet up with Eva and go back to her place.

A bunch of spectators trapped in a cinema theatre.

One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organize to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.

Each person’s action affects everybody. This fine principle of teamwork applies even when individuals are pulling in different directions. Trying both to reach the chocolate box in one’s nearest corner and to stop the others reaching theirs, resistance becomes momentum and then desperate resistance again. Progress is most effective backwards. The square of rope comes alive, morphing into a diamond, a triangle, a trapeze, as the advantage shifts with every second. It’s when you’re nearly there that you’re most vulnerable, losing impetus, to grab the prize or be dragged back. The balance of forces is always broken in the end.

When her mother dies, 40-year-old Helena now has time for herself after years of taking care of her family. She works at a film production company, dances boisterously, gets drunk. A quiet film about letting go morphs into a coming of middle age story.

It's a documentary about the consequences of our eating habits for the planet, our health and in animal well-being. Filmed in several countries: Portugal, Belgium, France, UK and Lebanon. It gives global insights about the problem.

They all say that you killed an Angel. Who says that ? They. It’s not an Angel. It isn’t ? No. It’s a rare bird, just like you and me.

Bêka & Lemoine continue their Homo Urbanus series of films about various world cities and their inhabitants, this time exploring the humans of Lisbon, the Portuguese capital.

Somewhere in an unspecified time, Patrick Mendes presents an initiation ritual in a community at the ends of the earth.

Ana doesn't care for the pure love André devotes her, and turns her heart towards a noble man that is just lightly interested in her. Ana will experience the agony of being abandoned, and must contemplate the reclusion of a nun's life.

Tomás and Sofia have been married for five years. He works as a cartoonist in the local newspaper. She works in a hotel. Tomás dreams of being an artist. But he lacks the inner strength to achieve it. Raul, his best friend and his "Guardian Angel" insists on the highest quality of his paintings. But when everything seems to be happening, Tomás enters in an emotional crisis that keeps him increasingly apart from Sofia into a point that she does not recognize him anymore. Sofia begins to lose her mental sanity. She starts living in an unwanted isolation. In her dormant mental state, she begins to feel bad about what she discovers inside of her...She feels something evil coming closer and closer to her. Sofia realizes that her life became something that now she can not control anymore. Two parallel stories about two persons that look for each other but simultaneously fear one another. Only life as itself

A documentary about and featuring the men who comprised the First Brazilian Fighter Squadron in WWII.

A story about love, madness and death in the contemporary world of digital technology. Can we decide to go mad? Can madness be contagious? Or is reality inconsistent and dependent on our perception? Can we survive without others? Two university students, Ana and Mário, want to test their relationship with reality by entering a voluntary strange experience of self-confinement. Surrounded by a deep forest and focusing entirely on a computer strategy game, reality blurs with fantasy and slowly they experience spheres that have not been visible before.

Carlo, a steel worker, has been laid off from his job. He's married to his high school sweetheart, a cancer survivor. They have a special needs teenage son. Carlo has lost his medical insurance; the bank is going to foreclose on their house in 8 days. Carlo will do ANYTHING to protect his family in this compelling story.

On April 25, 1974 the iconoclastic Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha was in Portugal. There, he joined the collective collective film "As Armas e o Povo". With his foreign and peculiar look, he broke the rules of conventional filmmaking.

The story is set in a coastal town and follows the story of a man who has to come to terms with his hidden desires and longings. This leads to a confrontation with his past and his social relationships.

Tiago Pereira invites geographer and author Álvaro Domingues for a journey through Terras da Chanfana. The film portrays a present without presuming to guess its future or longing for a gone past, looking into the question of what is a territory.

Mamba Negra is a collective of artists/activists with a strong LGBT and feminist component, where rave culture and social resistance come together bringing to life vibrant and eclectic anti-establishment parties. The documentary takes us along the hypnotic spaces of São Paulo's underground scene, the streets of downtown filled by Carnival and the collective's headquarters, and through the intimate revelations of the collective's key members offers an insight into a group at the margins who strives to stitch together the open wounds of a society that tries to kill diversity.

Lena disappears mysteriously during the winter of 1976. This is the last stop on a journey that begins in colonial Mozambique on new year's eve at 1957 gives way to 1958. Ningo, a black boy brought up by Lena's parents, and her childhood friend, comes to Lisbon to help find her, at the request of Lena's mother. Using the letters that Lena has left behind as a testament to her life, in wich she has rebelled against the challenged the powers that be, Ningo discovers the identity of her kidnapper - Jorge Matos - a former secret policeman who has followed her from Lourenço Marques, motivated by morbid desire. Lena's kidnapper dies from two inexplicable snake bites to the neck, in accordance with a legend and ritual that had been part of Lena and Ningo's childhood.

Nuvem, a young man with a strong penchant for stroll and daydream and little given to work, prefers the company of dogs and clowns. Seeing the indifference of his entourage, he lets his need for independence guide him and sets out to find the mysterious sunfish.

Summertime. Sam and Adele are on a beach holiday in Portugal. When Sam locks eyes with Miguel, the attraction between them throws Sam, Adele, Miguel, and his friend Santiago into a new configuration. The shelter of the woods and the dynamism of the sea lead into a night of secrets and revelations.

A film about the incommunicability of two worlds.

A colonel working for Censorship, widower, learns that his wife read banned books in his absence, "New Portuguese Letters" and "My Lady of Me". The colonel will discover the woman he did not know in life through the poems that she read. As the revolution arrives in April 25, 1974, the Colonel will remain true to their convictions although the poems have already influenced his own life.

Europe’s largest lithium mine is about to start operating in Trás-os-Montes, much to the dismay of the local inhabitants. Frederico Lopo induces an earthy sensuality and contrasts two geologies: that of mining prospection and machines, and that of roots and people.

A two parts making of documentary, following José Augusto Silva and his film crew during the shooting of a university short film called Castelo.

Concerns an Irish woman, Cathy (Pauline Cadell), who dearly loves her Portuguese lawyer husband, Pedro (Rui Morisson); however, unbeknownst to her, he engages in one tryst after another. Cathy soon finds herself trying to help a young delinquent get off heroin, while the youth's desperate mother joins a weird religious cult. In other segments, an elderly man is nearly driven mad with grief at the loss of his granddaughter in a train station, while a down-and-out jeweler ushers the young girl to a hotel room.

A son of a butcher, who is miserable working in his family’s business, avoids touching meat at all costs just because he doesn’t have the guts to tell his father he wants to be vegan.

In a future not far from the reality we live in, Nicolas, a fading artist, discovers a terrible secret about the big corporations, and desperate with such find, decides to force the M.A.B. Big Boss to reveal it to the population.

"UNFINISHED" represents a life left on hold. This film depicts a repetition of the days that follow. A mental spiral that seems to have no end and, because of it, everything remains unfinished. A mix of everyday reality with what goes on in the imprisoned mind that, due to its own problems and frustrations, ends up becoming increasingly involved in its thoughts and stuck in a routine at home, while life outside remains "unfinished."

New short film by João Mendes Pinto

Loves are found and lost. Families disappear and start. Houses, denouements, solitude, friendship. All that we keep, and all that we leave behind. Shot on Super 8 film between 2010 and 2018 in Portugal, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Guinea-Bissau, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Chile, ANYTHING AND ALL records the author’s memories as the days return to normal and emotions start to weaken, exploring the little ceremonies and other manias we indulge to remember our story.

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".

When is one life more valuable then another? A boy (Fabio Santos) and a girl (Cristina Gomes) will have to discover the answer in a few seconds, but ... Not everything is what it seems! A story of Tony Simoes with the directing of Eduardo Rodrigues, comes END, the new short film from the duo!

A historical documentary and filmic poem that interprets the story of José Francisco Pereira, an enslaved man who was tried by the Lisbon Inquisition for sorcery and sodomy. An adaptation of Pereira’s trial is interwoven with passages from Saint Peter Damian’s passionate 11th-century condemnation of sodomy as an unrepeatable sin in Letter 31 (also known as The Book of Gomorrah), and Walter Benjamin’s iconic elucidations on historicism and progress in Theses on the Philosophy of History. The film revisits the morally and legally charged figure of the sodomite as a violent historical construction and expression of ecclesiastical, institutional, and colonial patriarchy.

Sofia, a teenager, finds herself alone at home for the first time. As she navigates through the solitude, frightening events begin to unfold, leaving her trapped in a fight for survival.

In this short animation, Remir, a dragon hunter, fights a winter dragon.

Isolated from everything and everyone, Marc suddenly gets a surprise visit from someone he hasn't seen in years, and their relationship rekindles as they spend a day in a place they have known all their lives.

Muanza, a woman born in the Kingdom of Kongo in the early nineteenth century and trafficked to Brazil, awakens to find herself in the present, roaming the streets of Rio’s rapidly changing port region, known as ‘Pequena Africa’, or Little Africa.

A behind the scenes look at Gonçalo Waddington's new film, Patrick, visiting the shooting locations and interviewing the main protagonists.