Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Set against a vibrant tapestry of music and movement, Tem Fé poetically explores female energy, resilience, and ancestral roots. Through striking visuals and soundscapes, the film celebrates the strength of women and their spiritual bond across generations.

While returning home for christmas, Mariana, finds herself suffocated by the big plans and expectations of her family.

In the middle of the Rio Carnival, Patrícia and Paula live their encounters and disagreements.

Roberto works hard in his bicycle shop, looks after his family and pays his taxes. One day, after many years of fixing other peoples bikes and filling in tax returns he realizes he is penniless. Like a good citizen, he decides to file for bankruptcy and while waiting in line at the tax office, he is approached by Nancy, a corrupt fiscal lawyer in search of new people to extort. She gives him her business card and the impression that her firm will help him with his dilemma and save his store from insolvency.

In a Lisbon techno club, Abdul, an immigrant worker on his very first shift, is on a video call with his wife Aliyah, who is going into labor and urging him to be present, while his new boss Maria desperately calls for his help. Caught between work’s demands and his son’s birth, Abdul grapples with the fear of losing his job and the challenge of becoming a father from afar, and fights with his strict father-in-law for his right to perform the sacred tradition of reciting the Adhan for his newborn son. The film Prayer, which explores the intersection of tradition, fatherhood, and the struggles of undocumented immigrant labor, is based on the autobiographical story of its screenwriter, Deo Mahameru. The project was created as a student film within the KinoEyes Joint European Film Masters at Lusofona University in Lisbon.

Gentrification, fame, pop culture, no culture, the new Lisbon and digital dystopia, what do all these things have in common? Charles and Nicole.

A depressed girl passionate about cinema sleeps to escape her reality but is caught up by her dreams.

In the shadows of subconsciousness and fear, a girl seeks freedom by being reborn in nature. On a tree stripped of its identity, a portrait of a lifetime of lost memories blooms. Piece by piece, the path is taken and answers are found.

The film Faces, 1976, is a kind of triptych. Two heads of hair, one blonde and one brunette, rub against each other at the bottom of the screen. This is followed by a close-up shot of two women kissing. The camera focuses on their mouths and tongues — licking, sucking and moving between and around each other. Eventually, while beautifully filmed, it becomes almost boring to watch. The final section depicts the two women seated, naked but with heavily fabricated faces, leaning their heads on the other's shoulders—a tender epilogue to the intensity of their performance.

Rio Funk is a project about kids from favelas in Rio how to get hope and learn how to escape from their indistinct fate to be drug dealers in the future.

The agitprop film Estas são as armas by Murilo Salles was edited together from archival images and formed one of the first works to be produced by the newly founded film institute in Maputo.

Vera is a singer in her thirties; she is back in Lisbon for the final performance of her concert tour. The heat and beauty of Lisbon makes one want to be happy. Pablo, the companion she selected from among the many who answered her questionnaire, helps her through the sleepless nights. He has no family, but wishes he had. Vera concerns herself with the mysteries surrounding Pablo's life. Vera is not afraid of the night; she is not afraid of anything.

"The festivities in honour of Sao Pedro,August 8th and 9th 1975. A complement to Gente da Praia da Vieira, isolated from the whole film material, because of its specificities and thematic unity." (José de Matos-Cruz)

The life of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, his roots, his artistic career and his work.

In a dystopian future, a slender operative is faced with the unexpected birth of twins, having only one hour to find two volunteers who can sacrifice themselves so that their children can live.

A group of teenagers floats down the river, pretending to be dead for social media. One of them drifts away.

Father and son are in a long journey to the city. The road they are on is not on any map. It doesn't end.

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.

Two screenwriters are in the process of creating a screenplay, conjuring some of their past, present and future ghosts, projecting their concerns and differences on the journey of the fictional characters, possibly their alter egos.

Téo, a lunar teenager, meets the new parish priest of his rural village, who has just arrived from Mozambique. As the two grow closer, they develop a spiritual bond steeped in attraction.

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.

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

Ivo is a doomed man.

Employee exploited by her employer changes her life by winning the lottery.

Bound by a silent pact, five students make a secret trip to the country for what seems to be an initiation ceremony. In threatening landscapes and abandoned ruins, they submit to the strange rituals of their leader, the Dux.

O Moinho is an ethnographic documentary about flour production. In this film, Manuel Matos Barbosa explores the mills along the banks of the Ul River.

“Sapphic Folklore” transforms the typical love story into something contradictory: sapphic desire versus tradition. Set against the backdrop of a Portuguese folk dance troupe, the two characters navigate feelings unfamiliar to both of them and, away from society’s judgment, in a rehearsal room meant only for the two, they find themselves.

After being stuck at home for two months, she finally goes out for a walk. In a short form documentary, she photographically explores this deserted Lisbon, never ever seen, through a passionate look. The city breathes, stripped of human beings.

A couple stuck in a table of a restaurant faces the long hours of the weekend. A short film that explores the limits of warned-out relationships.

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

Prima and Lebsi are two young Afro-descendant women who grew up on the outskirts of Lisbon, daughters of immigrants who occasionally meet at a house party, on Cousin's birthday. Lebsi dates Rave, a young street dancer who makes a living dancing in the streets of central Lisbon, and they have a daughter in common. Prima is an orphan of both her father and mother and learned to let go of herself very early on. She lives alone with a cat and found selling cannabis as her alternative to generating money and paying the bills. Still, she is also a respected beat producer in the neighborhood. Both want to improve their lives, they dream of getting out of the “zone” but in the meantime they are living as best they can, asserting themselves in their way.

A film based on real testimonies where reality and fiction blend together, filmed in the interior of Portugal, in São João da Pesqueira.

Manuel, an elderly deaf and mute man who had suffered a stroke, has just arrived at a nursing home and establishes a tender relationship with a nurse, rejuvenating his troubled relationship with his father.

To get on with her life, Els, a mother in her forties, has to accept her adult daughter’s decision to request psychiatric euthanasia.