Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

“Belladonna Museum” is a short film that portrays a personal experience of a transgender woman in a tragic love relationship: it is a visual poetry that reinterprets iconic paintings from surrealism and post-impressionism to address themes such as emotional dependence, loneliness, objectification, the attachment and the abuse both emotional and physical.

Brazilian comedy in two segments. 'Theft of the Panties': Four friends are broke during Christmas. Genaro decides to rob a brothel because he thinks that the victims won't call the police. To get to know the place, one of the friends, Alfredo, disguises as a woman and goes there with Genaro. They set up a plan and then return to execute the robbery. 'I Love Cod': The owner of a bar in the suburbs, the Portuguese Manuel, wins the sports lottery. Three mechanics find themselves wronged for having almost won the prize and abduct Manuel's wife, demanding ransom. Manuel refuses to pay, as he finally got rid of his wife and can now win the woman of his dreams. Knowing this, the wife collaborates with the kidnappers to reverse the plan: Manuel will have to pay the ransom if he does not want to see her again.

An anthology film drama featuring a poetic mirror structure based on existential identity. In "The Immortals," adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old father, and his 60-year-old son, contemplate senility and death. "Suzy," from an Antonio Patricio story, is set in the '30s when a young courtesan dies on the operating table. "Mother of the River" is from an Agustina Bessa-Luis fable about eternal life.

At the end of the nineteenth century, two inexperienced Portuguese colonizers, with a vague intention of civilizing the colonies, disembark in a remote part of the Congo River in order to coordinate a trading post. As time goes by, they become increasingly demoralized by their inability to profit from the ivory trade. A mutual feeling of distrust and misunderstadings with the locals isolate them at the heart of the tropical jungle. Faced with each other, they begin a journey towards the abyss.

Maria is a sweet child. She hasn’t father and doesn’t like her mother. She has a boyfriend, A bandit who would like to change his class.

The moving story of the last generation of Holocaust survivors who travel to Poland with thousands of teenagers from around the world to retrace the Death March from Auschwitz to Birkenau.

A hotel by the northern shore of Portugal welcomes its guests over the weekend. A man is torn between being present for his wife and the space that his mother takes up between the two of them. A mother encourages her daughter’s marriage to enable her own love affair with her son-in-law. Another mother lives through her daughter, preventing her from making her own decisions. Three families at the end of their cycles of acceptance.

Diana was born and raised in the neighborhood of Estrela Polar, lost hers parents when she was a child and leads a band of criminals who negotiates for drugs, money laundering, weapons, paintings, jewellery and tobacco.

When a mysterious train accident forces a man to change his plans, he is confronted with a series of choices. Each decision he makes leads to a different scenario, each one filmed by a different director with a different cast.

Forget everything, or recover memory and remember. Let yourself fall and stop, or return to life and start again. Adrift, lost face-to-face, two women confront their fates. Is there not just one thing worth saving? Without hesitation, the desire to live, that rebellious fury that takes no heed of risks. And how do you save a world where poetry has disappeared?

Shaken by a divorce in the 1920s, Portuguese poetess Florbela Espanca uses her writing to deal with her tumultuous relationship with men, eroticism and love.

A young woman who dreams of leaving her small town in order to live in São Paulo decides to raffle herself in order to get a bus ticket to move there. The raffle winner gets the chance to spend the night with her. But in this small place where everybody knows each other, who'll be the winner?

While working opposite schedules, a couple attempts to maintain their connection through fleeting encounters.

Luís immigrated to the USA and intends to become an American. But after his father invites him on a journey to the Portuguese territories in Africa, he will find true love, and also learn to value his country and its colonial grandeur.

Two girls who love each other while living under a homophobic government, trying to stay together in a society that wants to keep them apart.

António is a farmer who leaves his land to go to the city where his son Jorge lives. However, unlike a perfect portrait, the patriarch finds a life of lies, a broken marriage and Pedro, a grandson with dangerous attitudes. It all translates into a life of broken dreams.

A young, attractive and successful publisher has a hidden secret. She is adopted and originally from Pinecrest. When she gets the job to visit an author in the small town of Pinecrest she sees an opportunity to try and find her biological parents. The author is actually writing a story about some young love in the town and she has a feeling that she is the offspring of that love but there are some stories hidden in the small town.

Three juxtaposing stories taking place in Portugal, Austria and Cuba create an intimate and poetic portrait of the daily lives and struggles of the elderly in an unstable world, seen through the eyes of their grandchildren.

The lone survivor of a deadly ambush against him and his team, a narcotics agent swears to avenge the deaths of his friends and fellow officers.

The story of how the conflicting relationship of Eduardo and vaudeville actress Isabel is affected by the passion he feels for their neighbor, Mariana, a young overprotected, and the unexpected visit of his uncle Plácido, a moral teacher.

Ana was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ruled by religion and traditions. Growing up as the middle child of a family of three with her mother and grandmother. Early Ana realized that girls and boys were given different tasks. Through her friendship with Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, Ana questions the world that is promised to her. When her friend Cloé arrives from Canada, bringing with her the glowing days of youth, Ana embarks on a journey that will take her beyond the horizon.

For a 13-year-old boy like Filipe, the prospect of a summer vacation in the Azores with his father is like a dream come true. But dreams are sometimes just a way to avoid facing reality.

On a train to Algarve, a young man recounts to a fellow passenger his past relationship with an eccentric young woman.

Suellen is a toll booth attendant who starts using her job to help a gang of thieves steal watches from people driving to the coast. But only for a noble cause: to send her son to an expensive gay conversion workshop.

From Regina's personal and visual memories, a tribute to her uncle Thomas, who was an artistic inspiration and played a key role in her becoming a filmmaker. A moving tribute to a poet of the everyday.

Dreaming of great adventures and of standing up for his homeland, a young Portuguese man enlists in the army during World War I and is sent to the front line in Mozambique, Africa. Left behind by his platoon, he sets out on a grueling trek across the mystic Makua native land, walking for over a thousand kilometers, in search of his dream.

April 1974 saw the fall of a long lasting dictatorship. The young democracy developed in the midst of much social and political turmoil. The armed wing of a leftist group changed the future of one family - the father disappears without trace, the mother denies their past, and the son grows up with unanswered questions. As a young man, Pedro is determined to reach for answers, aided by his apparently batty grandmother. Collecting clues and meeting people who would rather prefer to remain forgotten. His inner journey leads him Portugal to Spanish through the deserted roads of Alentejo. Pedro will find himself, but there is a price to pay.

A boy lives with his mother and younger sister. One day, his mother disappears with her lover, leaving the two children alone. António, the older brother, takes care of his sister, Maria da Luz. The little girl is about 10 months old. When she starts walking, their mother reappears with her lover, takes the girl, and leaves the boy behind. António is devastated, as he had been living for several months with a single goal: to protect his sister.

The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.

Young Jesus is taken on a vacation by his parents (Rita Blanco, Adriano Luz) to a deserted beach resort. They accidentally fall into overnight wealth after Jesus digs in the sand, uncovering a large drug stash. Others characters intersecting here include an alcoholic actress, a philandering banker, a general trafficking in arms, priests who close their church and head north as hitchhikers, politicians who watch an all-girl production of Julius Caesar, and beggars who recite a children's story in a huge heap of trash.

On a hot summer day, Paloma decides to fulfill her most cherished dream: a traditional wedding in a church with her boyfriend Zé. She is a devoted mother, a hard-working farmhand in a papaya plantation and has been saving to afford the celebration. The priest’s refusal to marry her and Zé will force Paloma to confront the rural society. She suffers violence, betrayal, prejudice and injustice but nothing shakes the faith and determination of this transgender woman.

1917, a beautiful apparition of Our Lady forever alters the lives of three children: Lucinda, Jacita and Francisco who lived in Villa Fatima in Portugal.

Double revenge in two separate stories. Set in both a near future and the historical past, revenge is served not by violence, but by love.

In the Brazilian countryside, the village of Monteiros hosts a unique event every year. When a person’s prayers are granted, they offer the village’s dogs a feast. Between religious celebration and popular belief, Lazarus’ Hunger powerfully documents a community coming together.

David envisions an unusual project, he tries to recreate the love between two women that can only meet through the Polaroid pictures he takes of them.

Angela and Jay survive by fishing for food on the wave-beaten volcanic coast. Their life as a couple is under stress and their existence is precarious. In their fishing village, which is turning into a touristic spot, they rub shoulders with Big Game Fishing enthusiasts who pay fortunes to enjoy themselves and prepare for the Blue Marlin World Cup by hunting the “cheetah of the seas”.

Beautiful Jocelyn Lane goes sightseeing in Portugal accompanied by bandleader George Melachrino and his orchestra. Featuring Portugal's top singing star Amália Rodrigues and the world-famous Tagide Club Dancers of Lisbon.

A story about two people (Clara and Tó), from different economic backgrounds, who love each other, but whose love is not accepted by everyone, especially by the father of Clara, who will do everything he can to stop their love. Things go even worse when Clara becomes pregnant.

A group of soldiers are sentenced for the murders of key political figures in the night of October 19th, 1921, in the streets of Lisbon. But the names of the conspirators remain unknown. Berta Maia, a widow of the 1910 revolution hero Carlos da Maia, will fight for the truth…

In the 20's, in the State of Piauí, Brazil, a young cowboy is used politically after killing his wife, who had been seduced by her boss and his son.

A direct stare into masculine interaction as we follow three boys in their mid-twenties, António, Xavier and Miguel testing the limits of their sexual flexibility.

The struggle between two friends: one, symbolizes the deepest incredulity about religion; the other, priest Manuel, endures insults with stoic resignation, but doesn't give up on installing words of faith in the hope of recovering his soul for God. In a pathetic atmosphere, in which everyone defends the primacy of their beliefs, they feel surrounded by a bundle of circumstances linked to a secret of love, with an unexpected and disconcerting outcome ...

The day begins with an exchange of favours. An interview, a football game, cigarettes after cigarettes. Routine fragments of those who live in an isolated space which labels and conditions life choices.

The revolutionary Álvaro Cunhal, symbol of Portuguese communism and political giant of the 20th century. He is nothing less than a larger-than-life figure, now examined by João Botelho’s camera, in a detective-minded film, in which the early years of the life of the historic leader of the Portuguese Communist Party are explored. In between, excerpts from his own books are staged for the spectator.