Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

An instant in the memory of landscape: the smuggling that for centuries crossed the line between Portugal and Galicia. The Gerês Mountains knows no borders, and rocks cross from one country to another with insolence. Smugglers also disobey this separation. The rocks, the river, the trees: silent witnesses that help them to hide. They just have to wait for the night to cross the distance that separates them.

"The festivities in honour of Sao Pedro,August 8th and 9th 1975. A complement to Gente da Praia da Vieira, isolated from the whole film material, because of its specificities and thematic unity." (José de Matos-Cruz)

This is an intriguing avant-garde look at what motivates the leisurely classes in Portugal, for better or worse, by director Manoel de Oliveira. Set in a spacious country home peopled with a wide-ranging cast of characters, the drama begins as the friends of a widow come to console her on the loss of her husband. But at one point, the widow goes upstairs, encounters her husband, and is faced with his accusations about the past. This event and others provide the means of revealing the petty, self-serving, egocentric, and romantic pursuits of the melange of people in the house. - Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This is the look that the film about Eduardo Gageiro takes. A film that departs from the stories of two images and that moves on crossing them with the ones that come out of the construction of his latest book. A film that shows how the deep Portuguese look of this photographer has seen the transformations of his country and of the world in the last 60 years. A look that has imagined what the photographer has seen and shot: the kiss of Maria to Salazar’s dead body in 1970, the kidnapping of the Israeli during the 1972 Olympic Games, the turning-point in the 74 revolution and the seductive revelations of the portraits from 1995.

Uma sombra é um espelho. // A shadow is a mirror.

Daniela, a young woman coming out of a breakup, moves to Lisbon for a few months. Feeling lonely, she starts dating Diogo, a happy-go-lucky guy she meets on Tinder. They get to know each other as they explore solitude, love, and friendship, aware that they will soon part ways.

Manoel de Oliveira's homage to Vila do Conde, with a poem by José Régio. It was shot in 1965, but only completed in 2008.

Ziraldo - Era uma vez um menino... is a self-portrait of the artist. The film follows Ziraldo's trajectory by means of statements and interviews he has given over more then forty years. His life and art history in his own words, voice and emotion.

A young sound director has a task. Rafael must record a crucial sound for a film. With his headphones on he scans the city of Lisbon, looking and listening for this elusive sonic eccentricity – his journey made harder by all sorts of disruptive noises.

Cecília is sixteen years old. She has a prosthesis in her left hand and a new love, but she does not have her mother's attention.

A young man has his time divided between his band and taking care of his sick grandmother. And the night is long.

Things are going well to a married couple, they have two sons, and things are going well in their respective jobs, Until the husband betrays her wife with another woman, and their son becomes seriously hill.

After the end of a 3-year relationship, João writes a letter about the past, the future, love, friendship, fears and personal growth.

Expression is a part of being human. Water is the source of an impossible life that rocks and consolidates the figure of a young woman.

Jaime Maussán investigates symbols and formations of considerable size that appear overnight in crop fields around the world. Learn more about their meanings and why a county in England is the epicenter of these messages.

Trips and adventures of tram 28, through the work of its illustrious passenger. 28 by José Manuel Xavier, is a meeting between two poets and their city.

A look at the life and career of Vasco Santana, one of the most beloved actors of the Portuguese cinema.

The film presents us with a reflection on the Spanish Civil War in the Portuguese society, At a time when Salazar ruled.

A satire of the film world, a film crew tries at all costs to make an advertisement for an emerging beverage brand, "Dlize". Between a lack of talent and professionalism, a director who doesn't know what he's doing, a star actor who has succumbed to alcohol and a bad lifestyle, and an entire crew on the verge of despair, Hélder, the assistant director, and his production assistants Maurício and Emanuel, try to keep the ship on course and manage to film the advertisement.

“War is a monster, war is madness, war is a self-feeding cancer, swallowing everything! War is a sacrilege, which destroys what is most precious in our planet, human life, the innocence of the little ones, the beauty of creation”.

One of the most beautiful tales in human history adapted to musical theatre, based on the work of Hans Christian Andersen, which contains a profound message about the fundamental values of human beings: acceptance, solidarity, spirituality and the absolute power of Love in a memorable show for the whole family, on a fascinating journey to the bottom of the sea!

This documentary is about individual lifestyles with conscious repercussions in the collective. Because from the Nature’s point of view there is no such thing as waste. It’s the symbiotic aspect of life. The whole Nature is a unified system of interdependent variables. Each one with a cause and reaction. Freeganism is an alternative lifestyle based on the boycott to capitalism, aiming to reduce the impact in our ecosystem, rejecting any form of human or animal exploitation. This is achieved through the limited and resource-conscious consumption, as well as the rescue of waste, in a society that produces above its needs.

A documentary about Iguana Garcia, a Lisbon musician, where we get to know João, the man behind the name, who embodies one of the most promising growing musicians in the world of Portuguese national music. In a personal and intimate phone call, we get to know him without barriers and all his history to this day.

Wesley, 12, gets involved in a dangerous and profitable story. Addressing a child’s innocence and awakening threshold for youth, the short film features the shortcuts and opportunities of the life of a kid from the boondocks.

From a screening of "Antes, o Verão" (1968) in the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Artes of Rio de Janeiro, in 2005, "Reencontro com o Cinema" follows the rediscovery of the life and works of filmmaker Gerson Tavares, who hadn't worked with cinema in 30 years.

A whole summer long, Portuguese filmmaker Teresa Villaverde stayed with Italian cult director Tonino De Bernardi, who was working on projects including a film version of Sophocles’ Electra starring only local villagers. She sits at the table with the family in their garden, on the back seat of the car on the way home in the evening or listens to the stories told by the woman De Bernardi buys cheese and eggs from.

Fatu’s father has returned home to Guinea-Bissau from Portugal to attend her wedding. The young woman teaches at the university and her future husband is a well-known musician. Their wedding is supposed to take place in Tabatô, a village where everyone makes music. On the way there, it becomes apparent that the father is seriously traumatised by his experiences as a soldier in the colonial war decades earlier.

A poetic essay about the undesirable, the lack of control and duality. "How to deal with the unexpected lives that appear on the ground?" is the starting point to this question-mark-shaped short film, that seeks to explore the different possibilities of interaction between human beings and the uncontrollable side of nature.

Raúl, a computer programmer believes that the world as we know it is doomed and that the project he is developing will change the lives of many people.

A thriller adapted from a play presented on BBC Radio 4 by renowned English author Dawn King, this Portuguese version is a film about obsessive love in our modern world of constant communication, set almost entirely in telephone conversations. In a large Brazilian city, Laura, in her early 30s, has just separated from her married lover, Ben, and agrees to go out with Noah, whom she met on an online dating site. What follows is a story about not accepting the end of a relationship and the fact that the other party has no interest in continuing. The twists and turns in the story show the psychological and physical dangers that lurk in modern relationships and that end up not ending well for anyone.

Lisboners (people of Lisbon) celebrates the ancient notion of citizenship, the right to the city in the making, in each migrant’s daily life, living and working. It is set in Lisbon but it happens in London, New York, Paris, Rome… anywhere. The Lisboners are people from Brazil, Guiné-Bissau, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, Ukraine, Moldavia, Russia, and Estonia.

Ara has always believed she will vanish when she turns 28 years old. As her birthday approaches, she submerges in the most fundamental sensations of existence. A masterful debut film from director-writer Ágata de Pinho, whose performance leads her character from trauma to catharsis in the most beautiful way.

At the world's only ballet school for the blind, located in Sao Paolo, Brazil, a prima ballerina and her teen protege boldly take on the unique challenges of their visual impairments to develop new forms of self-expression through dance.

A hand moves gently, its presence shifts continuously.

The mermaid is torn between two worlds, land and sea, its capabilities and its ambitions, it is lost between madness and despair. The stimulus for video dance was an audition, this is a moment when the performer sees his ambitions and abilities are valued, for some can mean happiness, but for others this may be a time of deep depression.

Short film released through the Gestos & Fragmentos platform during the COVID-19 quarantine. With verses by Adília Lopes.

On a pleasant full moon evening, a group of friends is playing cards on a terrace overlooking the beach. In the distance, on the open sea, somewhere between eroticism and violence, two young women float over the triteness of their conversations and the absurdity of their actions.

Rui, a young musician, is writing poems for the vaudeville company.

Bound by a silent pact, five students make a secret trip to the country for what seems to be an initiation ceremony. In threatening landscapes and abandoned ruins, they submit to the strange rituals of their leader, the Dux.

There’s something different about the atmosphere. An investigator notices that the electromagnetic waves are stronger. Unexpectedly, the answer lies in a human relationship.

After a flat tire leaves her stranded in the woods, a woman revisits haunting memories of her self-destructive tendencies on the finger nails. As she peels the skin from her fingers, each strip draws her deeper into the past. With every layer, she steps closer to the hidden child within herself.