Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Documentary made at Maria Maria, shelter and protection for cis and trans women living on the streets in Belo Horizonte.

In Hindu mythology, RAHU is the severed head of a demon responsible for swallowing the sun and causing the eclipses. It is also Alex Zhang Hungtai, David Maranha, Gabriel Ferrandini, Júlia Reis and Pedro Sousa, all five in the dark, in circle, vociferating to each other, with their arms their feet their nerves, a growing, raw tension, without term, sipping restlessness through a testimony of the exploratory music in contemporary Lisbon.

Mario and Alice are inside a car driving to the airport for one more vacation. Although, Mario has to make one last drop at a client's before heading out. Alice questions him. She wants to know more. Who is this man by her side? Is she ready to find out?

Eudósia, a young Spanish teacher, flees the civil war and finds refuge in the village of Castro Laboreiro. Between Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and France, Eudósia crosses borders, forging a legacy of resilience and freedom. Narrated by her children, Paul and Yvonne, this story explores the dividing lines that mark points of conflict and intersection between generations and cultures.

Surrounded by the vastness of the sea, a woman is followed by a mysterious figure that haunts her as she tries to unravel the mystery behind her husband’s disappearance. The austere beauty of Corvo Island (Azores) serves as the backdrop for the story.

Janaina is tired, and that can be scary.

An observation of post-colonial economic relations through the intersecting trajectories of two Filipino women: one preparing to leave her native island to work as a domestic in Europe, the other to return for good.

An exploration of the daily life, streets, and interiors of Santa Iria de Azóia, the Lisbon suburb where the director was born and raised.

It’s Autumn. A young woman and an older man travel by train to Douro, looking for a light phenomenon. They wait during the day but it’s in the silence of the night that things starts to appear. The invisible becomes visible, but is it still possible to believe?

After having walked the streets of Mellila, Malik, Mehdi, and Hassan now beat the cobblestones of Paris, discovering its lights and its chimeras, its joys and its violence...

One person's futile struggle to turn back time in the form of a music video/animated short film.

Porto’s Old Man was born and raised in Porto, right in the center, next to what remains of the Fernandina wall, in 1937. He heard about the First World War and has brief memories of the Second. He saw Porto united by democracy. He saw the construction of the four last bridges (he will not see the fifth). He saw Porto being considered a World Heritage Site and European Capital of Culture. He saw the much-acclaimed tourists arrive. He saw himself alone. He sees abandoned houses. He sees houses that become hotels. He sees a different neighborhood. He sees a Porto he has never seen. Today he wants to live the Porto he saw and put in his memory the Porto he sees.

From Funchal to Madrid, the story told by the man himself, family, friends and managers.

A visual and intellectual biography of photographer Guido Guidi

“I am totally in love with Timor!”, said the Portuguese poet, anthropologist and agronomist Ruy Cinatti upon arriving on the island. From 1946 to 1974, he led a nomadic experiment, building a lasting relationship with Timor-Leste’s people and territory. The cultural identity he sought to protect is threatened by colonial oppression and the decline of the Portuguese Empire. Rejecting these circumstances, Cinatti reaches out to the people and its tribes, documenting rituals, filming, photographing and even making blood oaths with tribal chiefs to gain access to sacred places and become a Timorese.

Ostriches and weird entities living in street lights

The living and the dead speak of the life of a three-year-old boy.

"I was born beneath this water. I was 10 years old when it all happened. Some things I remember well, others are blurred and confused. People change address, new churches are built, new bakeries, houses and streets ... But in this case, everything changed at the same time. Perhaps it was a way of pretending that nothing moved at all." During six years the makers shot this film in Luz Village (Portugal), condemned to disappear beneath the waters of the Alqueva dam. Especially for this project, a new village was constructed. But the forced migration does not pass very smoothly, since existing social structures, as well as the unique relation with nature are being disturbed. Combining these images with stories told by children who recollect their life during the moving process, this documentary presents the strange story of this village.

Two actors and a team hitch-hike along with friends and strangers, through the north of Portugal. The itinerary is a set of locations as random as the film is desired to be. There isn’t a movie yet. The idea develops as expectations change and dialogues are built, naturally, in each location.

Often underestimated as such, the anti-colonial wars of liberation were also large scale educational endeavours. Consider the educational strategies pursued by agronomist Amílcar Cabral and the PAIGC. Among those, the Pilot School to form “the best students from our schools in liberated areas, and [to be] integrated in our educational system for the liberated areas”.

In 1972, haunted by dictatorship, a young Portuguese man wants to disappear and come back to life under a new identity. He joins the French Foreign Legion, and starts his instruction in Corsica. He is a good legionnaire. He feels he’ll lose his mind and escapes after 11 months. He wrote a letter to his mother every week. Somewhere in the 2000’s, a young boy plays in the garden of his dead grandfather. His mother plays with him, but she’s behind the camera. They discover the distance of time growing between them – everything changes. They discover the letters of the young man.

The documentary shows a little of the history of popular Brazilian football and multi-sports club Flamengo.

A mockumentary series that resurrect the only 3 episodes of the series “Ai Ai Let's See with Gonçalo Almeida”, produced by the infamous host himself, before his disappearance.

Short about the village of Cascais, Portugal.

Portrait of Brazilian film critic Lelio Sotto Maior Junior.

The film is a documentary about Angola. It tells of the heavy cost of war to women. After ten years of struggle for independence, the war in Angola had continued for another twenty years. The film explores the motives of the combatants, including Cuba and South Africa's apartheid government. In this film, Folly lets women tell their own stories. She shows the women from mid- or close-range, forcing the viewer to focus on their faces rather than their bodies or surroundings, and takes the time to let them say what they have to say, giving a unique women's perspective of the conflict. Folly participates in the film through her voice-over, giving a subjective element. She admits that she is not familiar with Angola, and certainly is not an authority. The film thus becomes a record of Folly's own journey of discovery.

Raone is four years old and likes to fantasize, run, play with dolls and bubble soap. As he creates his stories and discovers the world, he traces a happy childhood free of stereotypes.

A woman and a man had their first night together. But what they both want may not be the same.

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.

It's a fantasy come true! Join young joey and learn to BE A CLOWN at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. You'll go behind the scenes of the only educational facility in the world dedicated to the fine are of "clownology." Here, both you and Joey will learn how to apply makeup and put together clown costumes. There's pantomime and improvisation skills to learn, as well as juggling and making balloon animals. And of course you'll learn the craft of clowning! Plus, two world-famous "Master Clowns" will be on hand to help - legendary Lou Jacobs and Frosty Little. So send in the clowns and banish those frowns! Join Joey and these magnificent mischief-makers. The smiles, the grins, the joy, the mirth, they're all here...from the greatest clowns on earth!

A dive into the mind and lens of photographer and filmmaker Ivan Cardoso.

A documentary about the village of Regoufe, threatened by wolves and endangered by human desertification.

In 1927, Luís Wittnich Carrisso, professor at the Coimbra University, travels to Angola to study the local flora. Second episode of a series of 4 documentaries on the Botanical history of Portugal.

The film-essay Mined Soil revisits the work of the Guinean agronomist Amílcar Cabral, who studied soil erosion in the Alentejo region of Portugal through the lens of his political engagement as a leader of the African Liberation Movement of the 1950s. This line of thought intertwines with documentation of an experimental gold mining site, now operated by a Canadian company located in the same Portuguese region once studied by Cabral. In Mined Soil, the voiceover dialouge explores the space, surface, and textures of the images presented, proposing past and present definitions of soil as a repository of memory, exploitation, crisis, and treasure.

When Joaquim, a frustrated writer living in the 70s, finds out his recently wed wife is cheating on him, he starts writing a suicide letter and prepares a surprise for his wife to find when she gets home from her lover's arms.