Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

A foreigner's difficulties in adapting to his new reality.

In this highly theatrical TV production, Monteiro again draws on the world of folklore – and, more precisely, on the widespread sexual connotation of the pomegranate – to tell a tale of love, envy, treason and mistaken/double identities.

Alice, a woman with a fear of solitude and an exausting desire to change her life, develops an obsession for the doctor that accompanied her recovery after waking up from a comma. Between an over protective boyfriend and an undependable doctor, Alice faces a choice and the possibility of ending up alone.

António Palolo's first films, shot in 8 mm, are black-and-white animations, constructed according to a cut-and-paste methodology and associating, with great sense of humour, images taken from magazines with geometric elements.

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.

Four distinct individuals — a filmmaker charting an autumnal trail of leaves, a mysterious girl wandering through the labyrinths of creation, a woman immersed in poignant reminiscences of autumns past, and a man devoted to nurturing the void left by a departed tree — converge in the multifaceted, polymorphic realm of Jorge Listopad (1921-2017), poet, essayist, teacher, mentor, theatre and television director, husband and father.

The ruins of an abandoned factory and the forgotten artefacts left behind appear in The Laboratory as a visible record of the passage of time and of a fatalistic degradation in which emptiness is an evident sign of the transformation of a utopia into dystopia. The inevitable ephemerality is also the centrepiece in On Remote Places, which, through a succession of desolate landscapes accompanied by a hypnotic soundtrack, evokes and suggests a contemplative sensory environment, around time.

Capitalocene. From above, the abstract monumentality of the Niger Delta (Nigeria), redefined by human ambition into environmental catastrophe. Existential fable. Another no-man’s-land, where the blackness or the psychopathology of (Frantz) Fanon’s colonization (and other African philosophers) seems now like an empty sound, and scholar debates, that understand neocolonialism, echo distant and misfit. In the war for oil, we find the resentment of a region forgotten and cursed by its resources.

A short movie written and directed by André Marques.

After a painful breakup, Pedro (Salvador Nery) grapples with existential emptiness and embarks on a surreal quest to locate the film’s screenwriter. He hopes that by confronting the author, he can change the outcome of his argument and repair the moment that derailed his life.

Vanessa is a teenager like many others, who lives with her mother in the periphery of a big city and misses school to player with her friends. Things change when she gets pregnant.

Lives being lived, words, gestures, gazes cross our paths, amidst a chaos en framed by a rectangular grid of windows and balconies. Rows of buildings interconnected by corridors perched over courtyards. Each ones property off their private slice of the view. The geometry of the life of a neighborhood: Bela Vista.

When night falls, a man pierces the darkness and encounters a monstrous being that speaks to him in an unknown tongue. Night after night he gives himself over to this obsession, trying to understand what the shadows hide. He tries to photograph it, draw it, but is consumed by the darkness.

The short documentary explores the transformation over the decades of the Stop Shopping Center in Bonfim, Porto, framing its history within the materialist critique proposed by Walter Benjamin in his Book of Passages.

Located in Carcavelos, Quinta Nova de Santo António, or Quinta dos Ingleses, as it is recognized by the population, shelters a small community of people affected by the housing crisis. Natives and immigrants, deprived of a roof over their heads, carry on with their lives in search of better opportunities and a breeze of change. Guided by residents' voices, this documentary is based on the adaptability of human beings in the face of life's adversities and their constant pursue of happiness.

A short film without any dialogue, with the aim of allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions from the story.

Short about the village of Cascais, Portugal.

In a Lisbon favela, residents actively participate in decisions in the place where they live and a research team monitors the process of inclusion in society. The absence of a decent housing policy, in response to the needs of the lower-income population, resulted in unofficial housing. Residents are unemployed or have extremely precarious working conditions. What they earn is not enough to rent a house and cover basic expenses such as food, water, electricity, gas and transportation. In this context of social injustice that also turns into spatial injustice, we currently have around 42 families, a few hundred people, women, children, men, elderly people, people with disabilities and some with serious health problems. They live in a neighborhood without minimum hygiene conditions, with precarious housing, without sewage,

Shot in two of the Azores islands, Pico and Faial, between 2015 and 2016. The idea of this film happened by accident. Going back to the footage of a location scouting from a previous project, canceled years before, another hidden film was found. The power of Nature and the role of chance in the creative process build a narrative about life, friendship, cinema and the influence of the unexpected in artistic creation.

Joana and Samuel's relationship has a specif routine.

The story of Boça, a simple and friendly guy from the city of São Paulo, a typical boy from Mooca, but unlucky and living a difficult life. Unlike his father, who is a good trickster, Boça is hardworking and balances his job as an office boy with his college studies and arcade games.

The phenomenon of Brazilian oral literature with a study on cordel literature and popular singing.

Making of the opera "Riders to the Sea".

Wanderings of a sordid and abandoned city of Lisbon from the graphic work of Stuart de Carvalhais

In Wuqiao, a small Chinese town, the inhabitants are dedicated to circus. For decades, different generations have been presenting themselves as clowns, magicians, acrobats and tamers. During the holidays of Chinese New Year, the Wuqiao Acrobatic World turns into a big playground for spectators. Surrounded by Buddhist temples and Taoist sculptures, artists create their own space of circus tradition, imagination, illusion and reality. Backstage life is melancholic. "Wuqiao Circus", a film about circus life fragments, performative existence and the love for playfulness.

Ironic report of the works in the city of Lisbon.

Set in the area surrounding the Angolan capital of Luanda, 'Liberdade' follows a young couple, Betty a seductive but domineering Chinese immigrant and Liberdade, a troubled young Angolan. When Betty tries to take the relationship to the next level Liberdade must go beyond his physical and psychological limits.

Marcos hosts Robert in his house – and falls in love with him. When Michael Jackson dies, Marcos goes sick and Lígia, his sister, comes to help them.