In the outskirts of London, Portuguese couple and parents of three, Bela and Jota, struggle to make ends meet. When a misunderstanding arises at school with their deaf daughter, the British social services grow concerned for the safety of their children. The film portrays the tireless battle of these immigrant parents against the law to keep their family together.
Jake and Mati are two outsiders in the northerly Portuguese city of Porto who once experienced a brief connection. A mystery remains about the moments they shared, and in searching through memories, they relive the depths of a night uninhibited by the consequences of time.
Buenos Aires. Exe, 25 years old, has just lost his job and is not looking for another one. His neighbors and friends seem as odd to him as they always do. Online, he meets Alf, a boy from Mozambique who is also bored with his job and who is about to follow Archie, another boy who has run away into the jungle. Through the dense vegetation of the forest, Archie tracks ants back to their nest. One of them wanders off course and comes across Canh, a Filipino, sitting on top of a giant heap of earth and who is about to go back to his strange, beautiful home town, where he too has a miserable job.
Augustina Muñoz, an Argentine actress of Galician origin, is visiting her family in a Galician village on the border with Portugal. While visiting the house where her grandmother spent her childhood, she also takes advantage of these days to rehearse the texts in Portuguese of William Shakespeare's A Tempestade, as she had been invited by a theater company to perform the play in the Azores archipelago. She travels to the islands by boat, but when she arrives, she doesn't find anyone from the company or anyone on the island who knows about the show. Finding herself alone on the island, she begins to investigate what would have happened and little by little, as she immerses herself in the reality of the Azores and discovers the magic of the place and its people, her curiosity for the island increases, forgetting what brought her there.
The story of a vigilante friar, zealous caretaker of goodness and order who, after suffering unrequited love for an engaged woman, becomes a terrifying villain in a quiet town.
During a night of humiliation, Raymond lives an inner revolt and a kaleidoscopic journey in a country that is about to collapse.
Double revenge in two separate stories. Set in both a near future and the historical past, revenge is served not by violence, but by love.
A bunch of spectators trapped in a cinema theatre.
In 1985, former oil rig worker Richard Linklater began a film screening society in Austin, Texas, that aimed to show classic art-house and experimental films to a budding community of cinephiles. Eventually incorporating as a nonprofit, the newly branded Austin Film Society raised enough money to fly in their first out-of-town filmmaker: James Benning. Accepting the invitation, Benning met Linklater and the two began to develop a personal and intellectual bond, leading to many future encounters. Starting in the 1960s, Benning had been creating low budget films mostly on his own, while Linklater had just begun to craft his first shorts. The filmmakers have remained close even as their careers have diverged. After the cult success of Slacker, Linklater went on to make films with Hollywood support. Benning, meanwhile, has stayed close to his roots and is mainly an unknown figure in mainstream film culture.
Azarias is a young orphan shepherd, keeper of a herd of oxen, where the ox Mabata Bata stands out. The oxen will be the basis of the "lobolo" payment, a traditional dowry that his uncle Raul must pay for his own marriage. Azarias’ dream is to be a normal child, to go to school, gold that is supported by his grandmother. One day, when Azariah is in the pasture, Mabata Bata steps into a mine - the result of the civil war in the country - and explodes. The young man fears his uncle's reprisals and flees to the forest, taking with him the remaining oxen. The grandmother and uncle leave in their quest to rescue him and persuade him to return.
During a harsh winter, a river by the house of two cousins freezes over. In the cold wind, their relationship grows bitter, reaching its limits.
A school inspector travels to the baron’s fiefdom to write a report on a heathen teacher. Having arrived, he is invited to stay with the baron, who makes predictions about women, horses and politics while the mysterious Idalina serves food and drink. The inspector becomes inextricably entangled in the baron’s world.
A couple retreat to an Atlantic island to rebuild their relationship, strained by changes through the years. In this strange landscape a lighthouse seems to exert power, and a strange woman appears on the beach after almost drowning.
In 2016, Edgar Pêra released The Amazing Spectator, a playful investigation into cinema’s disquieting essence that had everything from negative film images of boobs and positively splendid interviews to a donkey hand puppet. The film and an accompanying book formed his PhD thesis. But as so often with him, projects turn into obsessions – especially when there are masses of notions not pondered, thoughts not elaborated upon. And so KINORAMA - Beyond the Walls of Cinema was born, a stand-alone continuation of The Amazing Spectator that looks at cinema’s future in cyberspace and, accordingly, perhaps the end of its enslavement to figurative representation, the 'stupid sacred in narrative cinema' (to use a Pêra’ism), realism and artificiality in 3D cinema, and many other aspects.
Who is Sycorax? The first character in Shakespeare's "Tempest" to set foot on the island. The problem is that she has no voice. She is barely mentioned by Prospero as a crooked, old, wicked witch who vilely locked Ariel, the spirit of the air, in a tree. But why would she do that? Here, we wouldn't believe Prospero so much.
In a rural landscape, that resembles an old Portugal, an elderly man find out that his wife, whom he believed to be dead, was seen shopping in town. Spiteful and sad, he wants to hide from everyone, but his friends insist that he uses this situation to become stronger and try to get married again.
This is the story of a man who after living over ten years isolated away from his country, returns to avenge His brother's death. Inspired by the writings of David Henry Thoreau, he is translating 'Civil Disobedience' into Portuguese. The action is set between 1908 and 1910, between the assassination of the Portuguese King and Prince and the creation of the Portuguese Republic, an era where anarchists who fight against the monarchy often cross the path of burglars. On a country where corruption is set, the state representatives try to rob, arrest and kill innocents. The main character faces the tyranny of the state and tries to save the rest of his family. But this is a country where nothing changes.
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.
Inspired by popular cult, O COVEIRO is part light part darkness, a bedtime story and almost a nightmare. A child is born and his parents die of fright just to see him. André Gil Mata revisits the traditional Portuguese tale, in a fantastic movie where heads bounce, but you hear a song.
In a parallel world Pedro tries to hack his way into joining an exodus to another planet. While he dwells in his dreams and frustrations of being left behind he meets Eva, who challenges him and forces him to come to terms with his purpose.
