Ana is spending the holidays with her family. The setting is perfect for relaxation and for wondering. Next to the house, workers are building a pond. Attracted by it, Ana senses a presence, someone familiar yet still unknown. Alexander David captures on screen all the beauty of a childhood...
Filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos sifts through the memories of her ancestors. Her naval officer grandfather, Henrique, who married her grandmother, Beatriz, on her 21st birthday, spent extended periods at sea, leaving her with six children. This is the beginning of a generational saga.
There is a long night when Hugo, a civil servant, is sitting on the stairs of the Ministry where he works. He can’t face going home. The images of the mysterious 8 mm films he found in António’s house after he passed away keep coming back to his mind. Hugo remembers the day when Antonio, his...
Since 2015, the Landless Workers Movement has been occupying an indebted sugarcane factory's land to press for its redistribution through land reform. Grandma, P.C. and their encamped fellows struggle to conquer a small share of land where they can settle down and live a self-sustainable life,...
Daughter of two worlds, the one that the English parents left behind and the Portuguese land of her upbringing that still calls her a foreigner, Ruby moves between the borders of both, without belonging to either.
Wayward boy punishes his mother’s lover. Beauty and horror fondle each other. Young gods callously abjure conventional morality. Death goes whoring in child’s guise.
In an ominous Lisbon courtyard where the last executioner of the kingdom once lived, an accident is waiting to happen. After a patient game of who's observing who, four characters will collide with dire consequences. Inspired by the novel The Damned Yard by Nobel Prize-winning Bosnian writer Ivo...
In summer, the Portuguese countryside is ravaged by fires. Otilia struggles between her job as a pool cleaner and the need to take care of her mother alone. Stunned by this suffocating daily life, the flames awaken in her solitude, despair and the desire to escape.
Based on one of the short stories from the "Decameron", "The Convent Gardener" mirrors the story of Young Gardener Masetto and presents, in two separate parts, the story of a young man and a young woman who pretend to be mute in order to get a job as a gardener in a convent inhabited by several...
Filmed over 15 years, Deuses de pedra draws careful lines between past and present, portraying a beautiful land and the beautiful souls of those who live there.
T. S. Eliot ends one of his most famous poems, "The Hollow Men", by repeating three times the sentence "This is how the world ends" - and then adding: "Not with a bang but a whimper."
Portugal. 15th century. Monks build a wall around a forest to bar the entry of women. But in the world of the unseen, lit by their souls, women have made their kingdom of invisibility without walls.
After a spell cast by Grandma Faraway, the oldest son of a small family encounters the ghost of his late Grandma Maria still living in her old house, and they chat as they used to.
In the wake of a dream, João Vieira Torres sets off to find the children that his grandmother Aurora, a midwife, helped deliver. Through encounters with the living and the dead, he uncovers tragic destinies which reflect a structural history of violence against women. A curse dispelled by the...
Márcia is a social media pro and knows all the best poses and filters for perfect selfies. Her son Flávio helps her to take photos of herself. This is how she manages to hook up with famous rapper Da Reel Chullz on Instagram. She is not about to turn him down when he asks her out on a date –...
It’s summer and it feels like everything is melting. The body melts in sweat and the afternoon fades into endless nights. Weird dreams invade Shade’s sleep and unexplainable lights appear in the sky. Between work, home and friends, Shade seems to be floating. They are in suspension, in an...
Sprout. In the vacant lots against the hammering of buildings always under construction, between walls of granite, cement and sheet metal with rust, moss and cats; on the hillside between the train and the river, next to the traffic on the highway, facing the subway, vegetable gardens sprout. In...
On a secluded island lives an autonomous community of children who don’t speak, communicating only in gestures. Guided by the eldest among them, they operate like an agrarian commune with strict rules and beliefs. Adults are banished into the surrounding woods, and every year, the oldest member...
