Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Poti Pati is a film based on a monologue that a character has with himself—or with his double—the text challenges the characters, brings them closer together, punctuating it with body movement. The materiality of time is sought in the details of space and in the imaginary functioning of obsolete machines. Poti Pati expresses, in the polysemy of the monologue and in the migration of images between the observer and the observed, a challenge to the viewer-observer whose cinematic references are summoned.

A TV movie by Fernando Lopes.

The production of images on the street, music research to skateboard videos and the process of media construction make the artistic production inherent to the skateboarding practice in the city. Immaterial is the documentation of artistic production and skateboarding as an artistic object.

On a Sunday an older actress (Isabel Ruth) decides to use her mobile phone to take photos of a sleeping young actor (Joaozinho Costa)

Two brothers, one straight one gay reopen old childhood issues.

A theoretical exercise can stem from a physical one: using the camera as if it was the vibrating device placed on the olive trees for the harvest of its fruit, the final result is a series of original and intriguing images. The camera shakes, gets in and out of focus, and we don’t exactly know what is happening. At first this is a strange disorientation, but then you get used to it through the cyclical mechanical noise that joins the images. The words of a peaceful female voice allows you to frame the film: a visual exercise after all can also be free.

The director takes us on a journey through the Portuguese continental and maritime borders, oriented by a map of Portugal. A year of pictures that cross the four seasons. The landscape is visited in detail, between buildings and natural landscapes, architecture denouncing the presence of civilization. The starting point is the point of arrival - and along the way we are introduced to people, stories, in an accurate representation of space and the life forms that inhabit it, including animals under threat of extinction.

The City of the Dead, in Cairo, is the biggest necropolis in the world. One million inhabitants live there: in the tomb houses or in the buildings that have grown up around the tombs. We can find bakeries, coffee shops, markets, school for the children, mechanics for the cars. Everything inside the cemetery. The City of the Dead is gigantic but it feels like a small village. Mothers want to marry their daughters, boys keep chasing the girls. These things never change. It doesn't matter if you live in a big city, in a village or in a cemetery.

Dona Elvira promises to get a job from José through the typical Portuguese wedge. In parallel, they are bizarre aspects and eccentric figures of the city life, including the tragedy of the actress Maria Alves.

This film is about entering the flow of the scream and seeing its color.

An aspiring explorer at heaven's doors, prays for someone to help and save him from certain death, and someone answer.

Picture yourself at home... The phone rings and they try to sell you something - the usual idiots... Only this time they're selling you a suicide, your ordered suicide. This is what happened to Luis Tinoco, a wretched creature who had already thought about dying. A comical character, with a bizarre childhood and who in adulthood is unable to be happy. Tinoco buys his own suicide, prepared and designed to match the reason for which he wants to die: love.

The Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra, Portugal is a huge estate that has two initiation wells built into the ground. This film takes us into one of them.

The story of a teacher and painter who, after his mother's death, camouflaged himself in solitude, distancing himself from all around him. When looking for landscapes that complete your drawing, he finds in a young refugee, his inspiration.

Candide never loved her. Manipulation is his favourite game.

Momento marks a second encounter between Manoel de Oliveira and the singer-songwriter Pedro Abrunhosa, whose song of the same name inspired Oliveira’s short film/music video.

Maria is a young theater actress who's never had a leading role. Therefore, she follows her brother's advice and starts using a new drug that promises to improve her performance. The side effects are unknown and Maria's mental state is affected. Would it be better to live out the rest of her days in oblivion?

Two sisters submerge on a deep journey between reality, dreams and fantasy - an exploration of the female gender in horror films, delving into the issues of anxiety and the continued sensation of feeling someone is watching you.

Sofia is sitting on a bench in a park, when a girl asks if she can sit next to her. Mesmerized by the other girl, Sofia tries to gather the courage to talk her.

This is the story of a film-making dog. In a series of return trips between Brittany and Lisbon, the protagonist, along with a producer, conjures up a film through the prism of ethology, in search of the sincerity of the animal gaze. An animal comedy that includes hundreds of images of dogs that have appeared in films over the history of cinema.

A turbulent day in the life of a woman in her thirties looking for work in a Lisbon flooded with tourists.

As the afternoon light fades, two kids play in the woods by a lake. When one of them disappears, the lake and its inhabitants take hold of the narrative and, when the darkness sets in, build up the walls of a maze that encircles the two kids. While one wanders through the forest searching for his friend, the silhouettes, textures and sounds of the forest slowly exert their mysterious grip.

The famous story of the Portuguese Robin Hood retold in epic proportions by the filmmaker Rino Lupo.

A documentary essay about a text that penetrates lives and lives that penetrate a text. In September 2015 teatro GRIOT - a theatre company based in Lisbon, whose actors are mostly Afro-descendants - started to rehearse Shakespeare's "The Tempest" with acclaimed director Bruno Bravo in a little coastal village. Starting with the first rehearsals the film explores Shakespeare's text and the actors' biographies, between the play and the landscape and brings up topics such as memories, home, emigration and colonialism. A complex mosaic of multiple voices.

The way in which we cross, one time only, the space of a public swimming pool reminds us of life, from birth until the end.

Portuguese short-film.

Set to the sultry sounds of a samba, this is the tale of a gay private detective hired by a desperate woman in search of her man. Hustlers, bath houses, jealousy and betrayal; all set to music you can dance to.

Documentary on Mão Morta's three sole concerts.

Documentary on the work of Helena Almeida, a plastic artist that, since the end of the 60s, has developed a body of work in which she explores the limits of self-representation and the frontiers of the different mediums she uses, be it painting, drawing, photography or video. "Pintura Habitada" focuses on the several phases and elements involved in the creative process through which Helena Almeida constructs her works, from the first studies to the exhibition of the completed work.

Following a real lost myth, in Vila Chã, we search for the sea women called "fisherwomen" in one of the few places in the world where women are skippers. But where are they and the 120 small-scale fishing boats? There are just 8 boats and a single fisherwoman. In a land of brave seamen, we have filmed the passion for the sea and the passion for fishing. - Doclisboa

On the 24th of June, 1958 the philosopher and anti-nuclear activist Günther Anders was flying to Japan to take part in the Fourth World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs and for Disarmament. He recollected this experience in his book “The Man on the Bridge: Diary from Hiroshima and Nagasaki”.

A high-speed drama unfolds when three outlaws transporting a kidnapped prime minister experience a critical car breakdown in a remote location, forcing them into a tense standoff where only strategy and nerves can determine survival.

Malu and Clara are two children who in a sudden meeting create a genuine friendship full of creativity and energy – until it’s time to go home.

A hand moves gently, its presence shifts continuously.

Debora is a young woman who came to live in Recife because of college and, along with the new city, new problems arise in the girl's daily life. Charlie Brown Jr fan Debora tries to stay calm while situations with her roommate, studies and the heat always get in her way.

The frill has already happened. Completing the goal does not necessarily end the ritual. The places of the present time are the deeds.

Abílio is a travelling salesman with as much ability to sell as he is inconvenient. He makes a stop Mrs. Etelvina's pension for business and something more.

Thiago is in love with a girl who appears every night in his dreams. Obsessed with the desire to meet her, the boy can no longer sleep.

In a huge abandoned shed, a woman inflicts the most various tortures on a man in order to get answers.

An isolated air traffic controller in a small island of the Azores archipelago is contacted by a lone pilot cut helplessly adrift over the North Atlantic.