Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

After his father dies, Italian-born saxophone player Cristiano finds a new life in Brazil as an insurance broker, but a return to Italy reignites his love of music and of life.

A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.

On a Summer afternoon, Pedro packs the last few boxes before having to leave his apartment in New York. 12 years ago, Pedro and Ana had arrived in America from Portugal, in search of a dream. Now, Ana's voice describes, from the other side of the ocean, that same country to which they are returning. As the rooms are emptied, Pedro bids farewell to one life, welcoming another. But the dream that brought him will remain forever in the city that never sleeps, awaiting his return.

A few fugitives... And a very, very long way to freedom.

An intimate drama about an aging war veteran forced into a retirement home, where he confronts the ghosts of his past and forms an unexpected bond with his Black caregiver.

The film of a performance of a selection of cabaret comedy sketches by Karl Valentin, with Jorge Silva Melo as stage director. The show was a complete success and has become almost legendary. Solveig Nordlund shot it, adding some more sketches that weren’t included on the show.

The Portuguese Revolution (1974-75) seen through the eyes of some of the most important photographers and filmmakers that witnessed the event. Their dreams and expectations and what came out of the revolution. With outstanding historical footage.

I wasn’t told. I wasn’t told it would be so difficult to live together. To keep a family together. To maintain love and happiness. I wasn’t told, and if someone had told me I wouldn’t have listened. I chose to live with my camera in my hand, filming the trajectory of feelings, from the golden age to the lost paradise, from being born to being reborn.

It's the story of a child and her mother, two lives that don't communicate with each other. Is that loneliness that sometimes reaches the size of the night. Dark is the night. Dark is the mother. And dark becomes the entire Universe when you are alone and abandoned.

Rodolfo Guerra, a young man from the upper class of Rio de Janeiro, has his fancy imported car taken from him at gun point in front of his condo by two men. With the help of the alarm system installed in car and the police, he captures one of the suspects. He will find out that the suspect can also be the victim!

Part of "The Women in Music" series

Through an acting game, the director's parents become movie stars to talk about the cancer they both overcame and the fear of loss.

Once the boss started deducting a third of the workers' wages on the pretext that it was necessary to purchase new machines in order to compete, a group of workers went on strike, occupied the company, but were expelled from their workplace by the police. Out on the street, the workers think about the best way to make their comrades and the general population aware of the seriousness of their situation. They then decide, by mutual agreement, following the humorous tradition of cegadas and popular theater, to improvise a satirical performance in which they denounce some typical examples of capitalist exploitation. From the bandstand, which serves as their rehearsal stage, to the final procession, which unexpectedly takes on a different tone, the workers learn and teach us how scathing and uncompromising criticism of capitalist institutions can be transformed into a celebration of struggle, joy, and unity.

July 1956. Álvaro Cunhal arrives at Peniche Fort and is placed in the most modern and secure prison wing, considered escape-proof. Despite the tight control exercised over the prisoners, Álvaro and his comrades manage to organize a small commune and provide support to the most vulnerable detainees, while looking for a way to escape.

October 2019, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk (UK). Three months before Brexit. Hundreds of Portuguese migrant workers pour into town, seeking work at the local turkey factories. Tânia (The Mother of the Portuguese), a former worker in these poultry plants, is now married to an English hotel owner. She is the perfect facilitator for the Portuguese workers, but dreams of becoming a British citizen and leaving this dirty business behind by transforming her husband’s derelict hotels into refurbished senior citizens homes.

At the core of a royal court unbalanced by the long absence of its King, where women seem to have disappeared along with reason, the Crown Prince is murdered. Wrapped in the plot of the promoters of a decaying libertine spirit, the heir’s brothers, a pair of twins united by the music they play together and their Valet, witness a hunt for the prepetator launched by the palace doctor's deduction. In the background of all the chatter rises the individual desire of the twins for the dynasty.

A documentary film about football career of Dejan Rambo Petković, who was a star of Brasileirão - Brasilian football league.

Lúcia, a blind woman, helps Raul to escape of a running over. Then, Lúcia and Raul initiate one complicated relationship.

A woman recovering from a personal tragedy imprisons a man she met at a party, shutting him in a room of a building demolition.

Maria de Noronha, at 13 years old, suffers from high fevers and violent hemoptysis caused by a ruthless tuberculosis. To alleviate the pain, she gathers poppies from her garden and, at night, places them on her bed pillows. But the poppies have a devastating effect. Her deep sleep is invaded by ghosts and hallucinations: the luxury and decadence of the Portuguese 16th century. A broken nation, occupied by strangers.

It is 1979. Four young ladies are hired to form a girl band. They can sing, they shine with their dancing, and they shock the country. They become a big hit. They are DOCE.

In a Portuguese village by the sea, a family sees their house become a transit point to innumerous migrants due to a passport forgery business created by its patriarch, Vítor, and his Spanish ex-wife Fernanda. His Russian wife Liza and his son Mauro—who stops talking—see the newcomers alter the dynamics, relationships and aspirations of the house's residents.

I am what persists. I shall turn myself into the serpent that no man knows, that no god can see.

Paulo works as night security in a deactivated industrial complex. He lost his daughter in dramatic circumstances, and no regrets would console him. He sleeps at Luisa's house and witnesses the repeated transgressions of an unstable neighbour. Everything threatens to crack.

While rehearsing the annual play, a clerk tries to regain the attention of his beloved, in a comedy of equivoques.

Amo-te Teresa tells the forbidden love story of Teresa and Miguel, aged 35 and 15, respectively. Teresa is a doctor and, after a frustrated love life, she decides to abandon Lisbon and returns to her native land. Immediately, a strong attraction forms between Teresa and Miguel, a friend of her oldest son.

Pedro travels for the first time in one of the vans leading a group of workers to France. While, for the others, this is another work trip, each kilometer brings Pedro closer to a place that seduces him: the colossal mountains of the Alps.

A technical problem aboard a transatlantic flight forces a plane to land in Porto Santo, the small island of Madeira's archipelago where, according to a legend, Christopher Columbus the 15th century navigator, lived for a while and entertained a sexual relationship with a widow and her nubile daughter. A girl photo journalist profits to stay the extra-needed days for repair, to visit the island - and eventually she'll become part of complex relationships among some of the secluded people of the island. Also, a yacht lost in the high seas in 1947 reappears from the misty horizon 50 years later - to unite Fanny and João, a contemporary navigator.

Homage to Fernando Pessoa and the city that lies next to the Tagus River.

Lazarus de Jesus is the adopted son of a wealthy lady from Lisbon, whom he calls Grandmother. It is she who introduces him to Godfather, a great businessman who takes him as his protégé, and Angelina, the woman Grandma wants him to marry. But Lazarus has other hidden interests, the most important of which is an obsessive fixation on female armpits. When he sees the violinist Maria Pia playing, Lazarus immediately falls in love and starts to live for her, which will precipitate an absolutely unpredictable ending.

Underscored by French film legend Delphine Seyrig’s evocative recitation of a Henri Michaux poem, Maureen Fazendeiro’s film is a mysterious, multi-textured portrait of eclipse spectators in Portugal.

The final chapter of the Balas & Bolinhos saga.

Balane 3 is a neighbourhood in Inhambane. Inhambane is a city in Mozambique. Mozambique is a country in Africa. Africa is not just what you see on TV. In other words, Balane 3 is a documentary about the lives and times of the inhabitants of Inhambane, a city in the south of Mozambique. Like any other people in the world, the characters in this film work as car washers, fishermend or butchers, they go to school, hospitals, barbershops and street markets, they drink and dance at night, they talk about diseases, politics, friends, love and sex. They talk a lot about sex.

Six directors, six independent films, six visions on the state of the world. Each carrying a unique and personal interpretation of a specific experience, their crossover creates new space for a dynamic and radical inquisitive reflection.

Documentary about punks of the city of São Paulo and its difficulties, struggles and ideals, the importance of music in the universe of its ideology, interviews and images of shows of some musical groups like Ratos de Porão, Inocentes and Fogo Cruzado.

Marta and Jorge have been a couple for seven years. All their friends think they are living a perfect romance. Too perfect, perhaps, for the despair of all: Bruno, who is much younger than Marta but madly in love with her; Lígia, who is Bruno's sister and Marta's best friend and would love to see her brother happy; Carlos, Jorge's friend, who maintains a superficial romance with Lígia while secretly in love with Marta; and for Jorge himself, who is afraid this idyllic romance will imprison him and, convinced that his love and his lover's desire to marry will take away his freedom, decides to show her the way into Carlos arms.

A bewitching combinatory adaptation of the Bluebeard tale and a 15th century Portuguese fable of a damsel who disguises herself as a knight errant.

A story of love and deception, set against a backdrop marked by the actions of the political police under the Salazar dictatorship, censorship, persecution, and imprisonment, and the student revolt of the early 1960s.

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small for his aspirations and he decides to head to Brazil, leaving his sisters in charge of the household. In parallel with Vitalino’s story, If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal portrays the world of Paulo Rocha rummaging through his films and ghosts over the years.

Ana lives in a little village by the sea, with her husband and daughter. He decides to leave for a few days. That seems to be the ideal solution, because Ana needs to finish a work she has been doing for a long time. But her concentration seems threatened when she starts doing her daily walks by the village and the beach: she saves a stranger from death in the sea, meets young Alexandre and Emilia, and her friend Vera turns up in her house. And then, everything changes…

A portrait of the relations between neighbours in a Lisbon courtyard. A story made of small episodes of humour, friendship, rivalry, love.

This is the story of a young Mozambican footballer called Eusébio, a gifted athlete destined to great achievements, coveted by rival clubs, Sporting and Benfica, which ends up hiring him. Blackmail, kidnapping attempts, ministers involved, press hysteria and huge money offers make the story of this football transfer into a saga evolving between the two continents. It ends up when the legend begins: with Eusébio’s first match at the Benfica Stadium.

Director Jorge Silva Melo has developed a viable, though highly intellectual mystery story about the world of art and culture and murder in this somewhat theatrical presentation. When German artist Bernd Hoffmann (Michael König) arrives in Lisbon to oversee the installation of his paintings in a joint exhibition with another Berlin artist, Hanna Brauer (Charlotte Schwab), Hanna never shows up. Hoffmann is puzzled because he is certain he saw a video sequence with Hanna at the exhibition, and he begins to look for her. Another Lisbon cultural center, a theater, is also having problems that may or may not be related -- and the mystery deepens when Hanna is found dead, either by her own hand, or murdered.

A mysterious shadow unveiling a female figure walking naked towards us in the desert. In another sequence, the same woman speaks on the phone, talking about the end of the world. In a third moment, a couple prepares breakfast in their apartment, with the same woman from the previous sequences embracing a baby. What will these three narrative moments have in common? What is the relationship between them? Everything and nothing. Is the answer in the woman’s emotional words on the phone? Or in her helpless expression when walking naked? Or in the happiness she seems to find in the domestic routine? Perhaps the charm is really not in trying to decipher, but in getting lost in this visual and impressionistic poem, this shake that slowly expands in our senses. Max Planck, one of the founders of the ancient quantum physics theory, said that energy has a discontinuous structure and can only exist under the form of fragments. These are the fragments that hide here an ethereal promise.

Her mother has just died. Her father is not what she had thought. Caught between an uncertain past, which she knows only through the photographs her mother has left behind, and the prospect of a marriage that she does not really want, Elisa sets out to discover the truth. But will she recognize it when she finds it?