Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Sonia and Branca are two close friends at their thirties's sexual peak, on the verge of their cosmopolitan loneliness. Despite the long relationship that keeps them together, they are so distant, that it's as if they didn't really know each other. Cronica Feminina (Women's Tales) is a dramatic comedy that talks about women, but essentially approaches, from the point of view of its characters, the human need to communicate, seduce, fantasize, the need for love in the bottom of all things

In the even more conservative Curitiba of the 1960s, a young man emerged with a spontaneous way of writing poetry. The marginal poet drank directly from the aura of the counter-culture movement of his time. This is Paulo Leminski, the Pole of the pine forests.

A blood-soaked crime scene: a young man's body is found hours after meeting his favorite writer.

Félix, a Down syndrome child who is passionate about soccer gets the opportunity to take part in the main soccer team in a match against the rival school.

Humorous short documentary on the introduction of football association in Brazil, in Factory Bangu, Rio de Janeiro.

What makes a free woman choose a prisoner to develop a loving relationship? “The Visit” is a film about love in this special condition. Among the characters, some met their partners in the penitentiary; others had been visiting their husbands for decades. They feel valued by them and say they are well loved. They are women who insist on a relationship full of constraints and privations, even suffering various consequences of this option on a daily basis. In this film the prison universe is almost exclusively present in the report of the women, and never from the point of view of the husbands.

Pratas is Chaplin's replica in Lisbon. Always making trouble, ends up with a red eye and running from the police.

Documentary on Mão Morta's three sole concerts.

Peruvian sculptor Silvia Westphalen reencounters friends, places and pieces of work in the company of the director Rui Simões

A young woman swims in a pool, alone, at night. In the dark corridors, in the shower room, someone is watching her – danger approaches. She returns to the swimming pool and to the past trauma several times, trying to rewrite the memory of the event.

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.

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.

Cinematographic transcreation of a text censored in 1968.

Cruzeiro Seixas lives in a maze where every path leads to Mário Cesariny. Subdued by that obsessive love and hate relationship, Cruzeiro Seixos did not fully live, but left proofs of that non-existence: 95 years of paintings and poetry that await full recognition alongside other surrealist masters.

In the 1960s, António, an agent of the PIDE, is assigned to follow Aurora to Paris, a young woman suspected of oppositionism. It is May 1968, and during the student revolt, the two young people fall in love. Back in Porto, their forbidden passion ends abruptly. For decades, António writes Aurora letters that she keeps unopened. When the correspondence is unexpectedly interrupted, both give up on life. Based on the director's novel entitled "A Casa Azul" (The Blue House).

25th March, 2010, 9:30 pm. TD entered the stage of the beautiful big Coliseum theatre in the middle of Lisbon, Portugal’s capital. After a very strange live cello quartet performance followed by a suddenly ’wiped out’ opening with Linda playing an outstanding grand piano solo, you´ll hear what TD stands for after more than four decades: the style, the sound, the compositions. Here – once more – you can witness why this band is original and incomparable – just ´in it´ for the art of timeless music

A dark tale about a drug addict who internalizes his life through a paranoid trip. Slowly he makes sense of his past, and spares no one in the process.

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.

A blur shadow, an anonymous interview reveals a lonely man, melancholic, unfitted to his time. His testimony reveals a city in mutation.

How to reinvent democracy by the eyes of two Portuguese activists.

The rapid turning of a light draws a circle. In the space bound by its line unravels an archive of postcards sent between the island of Madeira and the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique. The figures carved into the Knife by the Sap of the Banana Trees circulates between a fictional colonial memory, and science-fiction.

Varziela, Vila do Conde, the biggest Chinatown in Portugal. A man wearing a hat and a missing woman. A high-heeled shoe, a blond wig and a Chinese dress. The confrontation between the East Wind and the Red Dragon; the cardinal points switched as in an ultimate Mahjong game.

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

Beds are Burning, Best of Both worlds, Blue Sky Mine, Forgotten Years, King of the Mountain, Redneck Wonderland, The Dead Heart, Underwater

The day they were preparing to celebrate New Year's Eve, Antonio is once again abandoned by his wife and children.

In a peaceful world, 5 teenagers are transported to a parallel and magical world where they're going to fight against the Avenger and theirselves. Now it's a deep web only.

Short film by Eloy Serén

On the edge of a lagoon, a young man is called to find his childhood friend. This gesture inaugurates a cycle of memories and absences, leading him to confront the weight of the past and the inevitability of accepting life as it was.

A dive into moments of concentration and muscular tension typical of the world of sport. Through intrusive thoughts and layers of everyday life, the film approaches the personal and metaphorical dimensions of overcoming. Starring ordinary people from the Parisian suburbs of Noisy le Sec, the film culminates with the passing of an unofficial torch, as a symbol of dream and collective resistance.

Two young adults face the challenges of childcare and parenthood after the arrival of the scariest being in the world, a newborn.

Through Lydia's life, we see the different dimensions that pesticides cause on an individual and collective level.

A young woman closes her eyes: in the darkness of the screen and the night, she recites O Marinheiro, by Fernando Pessoa. Dreams replace reality in the frightening wait for sunrise.

During a walk in the woods, a girl finds herself in the middle of a vampire hunt.

A successful black theatre and opera stage director, a very demanding and determined person, is going through a prolonged and devastating spiritual ordeal, of unknown origin, to which she seems to have become accustomed. She lives in a permanent drunkenness, shocking and implausible but paradoxically controlled and with hardly any excesses. She has a growing fascination for the talent and magnetism of one of the actresses, whose career she wants to dominate, as she considers herself responsible and owner of her triumph.

A car aficionado, filmmaker Paulo Carneiro travels 2000 kilometres to meet car enthusiasts of the Portuguese community in exile. In a pop and urban universe, Périphérique Nord explores this shared passion and the freedom it provides for these exiled persons who seem to finally find (once again) a territory of their own.

"Toponymy - As Memórias do Porto" is a journey in a slow, but panoramic train to the past. This film intends to leave a legacy of ancient customs and crafts that began to fall into disuse in the "Cidade Invicta" and to document the collective memory of Porto, represented here by Alfredo, an imaginary and dreamlike character, and an ageless guide.