Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

While returning home for christmas, Mariana, finds herself suffocated by the big plans and expectations of her family.

In a small Portuguese village in the late 1960s, a young priest sides with the population in their struggle for better living and working conditions. Following complaints from the industrialist who employs most of the village's population, the bishop decides to transfer the priest to another parish. When the people learn of his forced departure, they revolt and unite to prevent the priest from leaving the village.

In 1970, a man is tortured and murdered by the regime's secret police. Now nearly 40 years later, his friend, who had also been tortured, recognizes the man he deems responsible for the murder of his friend. Along with three old friends and the victim's daughter, they kidnap the man and take him to an isolated house. Once there, the concepts of justice and revenge begin to mix dangerously in a private trial with irreversible consequences.

From one of the most densely populated suburbs in the Lisbon metropolitan area, “Miraflores” stages a funny teen comedy, absorbing the little turmoils of youth and the poetics of their lives. Interspersed with an amusing mockumentary, in which a kid tells the “history” of the Miraflores neighborhood, this short film is a tender and fresh portrayal of a potentially anonymous place in the suburbs, filling it with a beautiful and transformative affection. The first shots of an architecture with no personality show the contradictions of cities and their communities.

Películas is the name of a poetry book by Luís Miguel Nava, a homosexual poet, born in Viseu, who died in Brussels and whose magnificent poetic work remains widely unknown. Drawn from the filmmaker’s family super8 film archive, and excerpts from the film Un chant d'amour, by Jean Genet, the film builds a “body” marked by memories, by various skins, by Nava's films, by his poems and by its landscapes.

“Since 2011, as an author and in a frantic and committed fashion, I record music and dance expressions of various kinds all over the country. From a great conversation with film director Inês Oliveira, who followed my work for a while, I raise fundamental questions in this film: Why do I do what I do? What is this all about? What are the relationships with the people? What differentiates me from scientific work? What is tradition?” — Tiago Pereira.

A thug love. A ruthless passion. A devastating fire. Thus began the saga of death and revenge by the one they called Soledad.

A man lost in his living room suddenly hears a sound coming from his backyard and decides to investigate.

Vítor is a grown man who is constantly dedicated to his work. However, after meeting Vasco, a laid-back young man, at a garden table, he realizes that he should live his daily life in a more relaxed way.

In a dark forest, a man finds and rescues a demonic doll with whom he tries to develop a love affair, only to return her to where she was found due to irreconcilable differences.

An aspiring poet consumed by guilt and loss, loses himself in melancholic and deeply profund thought through the wilderness, only to find something he didn't expect.

This is one of Noronha da Costa's films in which the "fictional" component is most visible. D. Jaime or the Portuguese Night, like the rest of Noronha da Costa's films, is part of the gothic films (Terence Fisher's work was one of his great influences), and in it he shows the different variations around the "specular bodies", which evolve into luminous magic and into sensual and sensory incandescence. At the same time, we witness a series of ironic and erotic, or historical, views of wicked virgins and laughable sadists, all resurrected from German and British romanticism, while the scenery is no longer Portuguese.

Lisbon, early 1940s. The neutral port town is an open door to freedom, for those who are escaping the Nazi occupied France and eastern European countries, and a war field for spies of every description. Lisbon became a cosmopolitan town, where the Duke of Windsor, Primo de Rivera, Pola Negri, Leslie Howard, Walter Schellenberg and Juan Garcia are often together in the luxury hotels and night-clubs. Espionage and crime go hand in hand, despite of, or encouraged by, the Portuguese secret police.

In the early 2000s, two young, social outcast film students tape themselves as they plot to break into a house and commit a killing. The tapes are found 10 years later by a film crew, and analysed by a psychologist.

In Africa, during the colonial war, a patrol is lost in the bush and a soldier dies in operation. Twelve years later, in Portugal, the soldier family meets in peace.

The nightlife of Praça Tiradentes, in the center of Rio de Janeiro, a traditional meeting place for musicians, circus, theater and transvestites. A poetic observation of a transvestite who sings in the streets every weekend, in the best tradition of popular artists.

Summer of 1982, a beach in the south of Portugal. Rui and his parents live closed in their worlds, blind to the failure that characterizes them as a family and condemns them to the malaise of survival. Rui will have school exams but he is only interested in music and in the exploration of imaginary worlds that he constantly sketches in drawings. Only Joana seems capable of pulling him out of his autism. The girl's vitality fascinates him.

Recognizing the undeniable role of Filipe La Féria in the history of Portuguese theater, this documentary seeks to explore the thinking that drives creation and unveil the philosophy hidden behind the stage.

A young man on the run from a mysterious government agency is desperate to find the cure for a condition that causes him to wake up at random places around the world when he falls asleep.

Zé Manel is the Manager of "Almas Penadas", probably the worst band in the world. A movie of his delusion of becoming famous.

A young couple, unable to make love after being repelled on several occasions (like in a dubious inn), buys a bed and carries it for miles, until they reach a beach - where, exhausted, they end up falling asleep.

The story of a young cinephile, who, coming from Braga, arrives in Lisbon, where he found a peculiar and fleeting job. Between the dark movie theatres, a girl and friends, the portrait of a certain era and of a young man like many, kind of lost, kind of uninterested.

A unique fish tale made with a dry log. Dive in with the fun, fast and furious fish in this animated short for kids. There’s life in everything, you just have to imagine it. As Danny “Dry Log” acts, he creates his own world underwater, inside a bucket; with rocks, sand, leaves and a dry log. And it’s underwater that the magic happens! New friendships, exploration and an angry flounder… Can Danny and his two friends outwit him and escape?

Present, past and future merge in the wagons of a train that crosses Eastern Europe in the XXI century: Poland, Russia, Ukraine. The slogan of the post-war "Never Again" sounds now like a fairy tale. Everything is happening again. Everywhere.

The conventional love triangle—the wife, the man (coffee exporter), the other woman (his secretary). Faced with the discovery of infidelity, a frivolous woman is forced to give way to her rival, the mother of her husband's child. She therefore decides to leave for the metropolis and start a new life, against all odds... Fate will bring the couple back together, in dramatic circumstances, with a glimmer of happiness.

The film follows soldiers escape and wander, talk, and drift aimlessly.

A respectable family falls into crisis when their extensive apple orchard is ruined. Delgado, a wealthy industrialist from the North, has just arrived in the village, apparently with good intentions. Desperate to keep up appearances, the Major and D. Lúcia introduce him to their innocent and eccentric daughter, Cilinha, who is only interested in her singing lessons. They entice him with the prospect of a rich dowry, but they are unaware that Delgado is not quite who he appears to be...

On a day like any other, Alexandre returns home to find out his mother has disappeared.

One night in Lisbon, a Japanese man helps an elderly Portuguese woman on crutches ascend a massive set of stairs. Their amusing encounter and surprising connection, despite major language barriers, rivals any Richard Linklater romance or Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk for humour and admission.

A poor young woman prepares to enter music college, but has no piano to practice. Her boyfriend decides to help her crashing into houses that have one so she can plays.

A poem. A tale made of silence and complicity. Light and shadows, the charm of the night, the moon as a passion... This is a tale about someone who tried to make the dream come true. This is the tale about the cat and the moon.

Abel lives as confined as his crickets.

Aladdin, a 15-year-old boy, has to face many problems after he is left orphaned with relatives who do not want him. However, everything changes after he meets Princess Jasmine and the evil Jaffer.

The night of the summer solstice. Fireworks resound between the two banks of the river like a bombardment. On the water, boats appear and disappear. Lost in the dark, rich and poor dissolve under the coloured firework lights. Is it war? Is it the light of the sky descending upon them? Is it the Apocalypse? Is it a fresh new start or the end of the world has come?

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

Once upon a time, the last days of 2028. This world’s disarray, no more no less than ever. Accommodate, adapt, evolve. The inability to live. The endless survival. Angela, a retired history teacher, has long lived in voluntary isolation, locked in an apartment in Lisbon. All her life, she refused conventions. Today, on Christmas Eve, she is faced with a “trivial” decision. Hospitality.

A young Chinese girl and her mother struggle to find a better life in Portugal, the 'West Coast of Europe'.

A documentary about Gravura, the Portuguese cooperative founded in Lisbon in 1956.

A documentary that brings together interviews with 20 activists who address the issue of intersectional feminism and patriarchy in Portugal.

A group of children, fleeing the war, is taken to Luanda accompanied by a nun. When they reach the aeroplane, 12-year-old N'Dala decides to leave the group and to reconnoitre the city. The nun then starts her unceasing quest for the missing boy. N'Dala, only carrying a textile bag and a doll made of wire, walks through the busy streets filled with people and traffic. Later he finds the tranquility of the island off the coast, where he meets the old fisherman Antonio, with whom he becomes friends. Not much later, he meets the lively, whimsical Zé, who is a little older than he is. N'Dala starts to experience the city and its inhabitants as increasingly forbidding and he would most like to return to the countryside from whence he came. Then he meets Joka, a fringe figure who persuades him to help with a robbery in exchange for money. With this film, Maria Joao Ganga wanted to provide a realistic sketch of the bitter political situation in Angola. One of her most important motivations ...

A man prepares an old ritual in a temple abandoned by its followers.

Short film by Fernando Lopes, decisive figure of the Portuguese New Wave.

In the last moments before giving birth, a mother sees how some moments of her life and her child are similar.

Little Red Riding Hood now lives in Sao Paulo downtown, a forest filled with a delirious fauna.

This film is a message of peace and hope to the world, paying tribute to and involving three Ukrainian people with different life experiences.