Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

He started out with graffiti on trains. Today, he is one of the most renowned urban artists in the world. His global influence is recognized by international curators and art critics. He excavates and dissects the various layers of human existence on walls, fences, and other surfaces. His work takes a documentary look at our surroundings. He is a social archaeologist in search of the deepest emotions. His human adventure begins on the south bank and spans the world from West to East. Alexandre Farto Aka Vhils is the protagonist of this First Person.

Martim is a poetry session regular, but never gained the courage to read in one of them. Later, he meets with his friend Gabriel, and decides to ask him for help with his fear. In the following session, he’s finally ready to read one of his poems.

Caldeira, Sado estuary. A clam picker and his friend spend the morning collecting up the bounty of the tide.

Tia Creuza is a lady who works in a family home, and tells in a very funny way how is the day to day in the house of the bosses, personal life and everyday things. Mockumentary made by MTV, starring Marcelo Adnet.

Mysterious portrait of Fernando, aka Deborah Krystal, the glittering and poetic performer of the Lisbon club Finalmente, where he has been performing every night over thirty years in golden dresses. Under the layers of his colorful fabrics, the many skins of Fernando are revealed, letting Lisbon’s legends come to life. Alternately woman mermaid, female birds, woman lion, we are taken into the desires and dreams of metamorphosis and myths.

A group of young teenagers gathers in a forest to camp before the school year ends, while something they don't understand seems to be circulating the place.

Haunted by failure and loss, an actress returns to her parched homeland, where her family’s fragile reunion unravels into a search for belonging and release.

Mértola, the Guadiana River, a place of ancient watermills, where flour for bread was milled. A place where birds live and people relax. Fishing boats pass by and the fish leap. The tide rises and falls, with the atmosphere changing every day. The color of the water and the landscape vary throughout the year. At the same time, Manuela Barros Ferreira left us a piece of writing entitled: “Soul”. Why do we gaze at the river?

A referendum on the government's transition to an Artificial Intelligence marks the end of democracy. Sandra was one of the activists in the campaign against AI. Now she watches the results unfold helplessly, fearing the last remnants of critical thought will be suppressed.

A normal day for misters Armando and Rogério do Cálcio (2023, Colorized)

Based on a work by Fernando Pessoa.

In The Beach, the elderly return to active life, leave the spaces of suffering and loneliness to which they have sadly been inhabiting in contemporary societies. They have fun, play, swim, run. They go back to being people like everyone else.

The brief past and present of two boys.

A depressed singer works on a song just as she's leaving her old band and starts losing her voice.

Animated documentary evoking Gisberta Salce Jr., a transsexual brutally tortured and murdered in Portugal in 2006, through the memories and testimonials of transexual friends and two of the young men involved in her death.

Luís Carlos is back from a six-week trip to Boston, where he was doing research on Superman for his master’s thesis. He considers Superman to be one of the best heroes of all time – if not the best. When he arrives in Lisbon and discovers that Superman has died, despair takes over his life.

Don't drive under influence of psychedelic substances.

An effervescent painterly film tribute – replete with driving organ soundtrack – to 18th-century poet and satirist António Lobo de Carvalho, otherwise known as The Wolf of Madragoa.

The short film tells the story of Natasha, a young woman of dual nationality who, after years living with her mother in Riazan (Russia), is looking for an opportunity to earn money in Portugal. Natasha becomes a waitress and, as time goes by, encounters Pub’s economic difficulties and poor pay for her work. Enticed by her colleagues, she ends up making decisions that will condition her future.

A bunch. A missing friend, a snake, a couch thrown in the way. Nine hearts restless in search of something that is still alive.

Documentary about the old people living in the highest floors of old buildings with no lifts, in Lisbon.

While spending holidays at his grandparents’ place in the countryside, a boy learns a cruel lesson of mercy.

Notebooks filled with words and outbursts remind us of a series of works by Regina Guimarães—her notebooks; works that take the form of a kind of visual diary, revealing (...) not only her inner universe, but also her relationship with the world and its images...

António returns to Portugal for his mother's funeral and has to take care of his father, who is incapacitated by a stroke. A macho former naval admiral who made his childhood a nightmare. Until he finds a home for his father, António will have to face the ghosts of his childhood.

When Leonardo meets an older boy named Felipe, he discovers for the first time what ‘love’ is.

Documentary by Manoel de Oliveira filmed in 1965 and exhibited in 2008 in the Venice Film Festival.

South of Brazil, 1940. Mother and daughter share the same drama and have their lives transformed, after striking secrets were revealed by both.

The original family is expelled from Eden and forced to face the hardships of existence. However, each of its members sees the world differently. Tensions, jealousy, and feelings of guilt lead Adam, Eve, and Cain to gang up against Abel, forcing him to make the first sacrifice.

Set in Haiti, more precisely in the places affected by the 2010 tsunami, Ornithes shows us the attempt of theatre director Gabriel Abrantes to stage an as faithful as possible adaptation of The Birds by Aristophanes. However, his pedantic attitude dulls the locals, who start to rebel against his impositions. Spaced out by imaginative stories about wives transformed into goats and offered as gifts to Gods, Abrantes's revision is a game of mirrors, in which a fantastic tale alternates with another, representing a vibrant and colorful context where folklore, myth and modern myths such as Robert Patterson of Twilight overlap each other.

Bart prepares a nerd and erotic surprise for Sofia, in Valentine's Day. A hot and exclusive experience for two... until the doorbell rings.

An old man rests beside a ruined mill when a young man returns to the place of his childhood.

In the 1970s, Orlando Jesus was more than just a boxer: he embodied the tough spirit of Lisbon with its neighbourhood gyms, intense nights and marginal figures that shaped a generation. An intimate and imperfect portrait, where the camera captures the gestures and voices that still resist, preserving a time in the process of disappearance, the presence of Orlando Jesus and the Lisbon that shaped him.

SHOWERS is a steamy short film that takes place in the men’s showers. It was here that I had my first cruising experience. The shower is often used as a convenient place to relax and masturbate, and a solo shower is one of the most common porn videos in the internet. Not only do we wash our bodies while we’re showering, but it can also be a genuine form of self-care. The sensation of water caressing and touching ourselves to clean our bodies can be very stimulating. It increases blood flow and it helps to reduce stress.

Audiovisual essay about walking through the streets of Lisbon. It explores discrimination and moving through spaces where one is not welcome.

The way in which the structuring of capitalist urban space reflects the contradictions and conflicts of the classes in struggle, and the demarcation of a Marxist analysis of urban reality, which the few off-screen statements only serve to confirm. One of the characteristics of the city in which we live is its differentiated distribution and use: the various areas do not have similar forms of occupation, nor the same urban facilities, nor populations with identical social and economic characteristics.

In a blank space, a barrel organ suddenly chokes and plays on its own. The player with pin-tipped feet, now free from playing, may start a dance that makes him see what he couldn't listen to anymore.

The desire to be seen and accepted as we really are is one of our deepest human desires and is the central theme of the dance film Velveteen. Inspired by the book The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, "Velveteen" chronicles a black queer man's journey from self-hatred and repression to self-discovery and acceptance. With dance and poetry, we follow our protagonist as he navigates ancestral trauma, racism, and homophobia to heal himself, find community, and live an authentic life free from the expectations of others.