Cunning and slender, harassed and on the run, Reynard is a metaphor of a never ending obsession with each breath, each gesture, each thought. Marta seeks in the emptiness of her body a way to arrive to her inner essence, in an abstract search of a free spirit that might end in her own enclosure.
Somewhere in the mountains, a man lives alone in a disappearing village. Wandering through the misty nature, interpreting among the walls of his dark houses, on the very ground with his destiny to belong to a world that has been rejected.
On his deathbed, his royal highness Alfredo, King without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories and the time he dreamt of becoming a fireman. The encounter with instructor Afonso from the fire brigade, opens a new chapter in the life of the two young men devoted to love and desire, and the will to change the status quo.
Which language shall we use to tell the stories we have been told? In which language shall we write a declaration of love? Lisbon, Bairro das Colónias, third floor. Conveying and translating an insightful encounter between different worlds, Fatumata and Aissato, mother and daughter, discuss love and the happiness. Their feelings have been determined by narratives and languages acquired at different stages of life and in different places. At 7pm, from the third to the fifth floor, where I live, a regular sound, always the same, like the beating of a heart, reverberates through the building.
Ana was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ruled by religion and traditions. Growing up as the middle child of a family of three with her mother and grandmother. Early Ana realized that girls and boys were given different tasks. Through her friendship with Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, Ana questions the world that is promised to her. When her friend Cloé arrives from Canada, bringing with her the glowing days of youth, Ana embarks on a journey that will take her beyond the horizon.
Mariana, an upper-class Chilean, feels a strange attraction towards her riding teacher, Juan, a former colonel with a shady past.
One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organize to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.
Alberto is a Portuguese environmental engineer who decided to change his life. He travels to a West African metropolis (an imaginary and futuristic city that has both Guinea-Bissau and Luanda), where he will work as an engineer in the construction of a road between the jungle and the desert. Moved by the hostility of the elements, the oppressive heat and the loneliness, Alberto meets Ema and Ben. Like him, these two locals are driven by an impulse to escape and overcome their origins. The bond between the three becomes for Alberto the only guarantee of mental health amidst a process of brutalization and widespread barbarism that spreads among his fellow expatriates, from the construction site to the NGO offices.
Salome gets a summer job in a junkyard somewhere in the country side. Under a western sun, in this place out of the world, her teenage rebellion springs up. From unexpected encounters to shared sorrows, arise promises of a new life.
A Lisbon night is traversed by the intensity of René, a precarious young Brazilian who has anchored in town, immersed in personal and existential conflicts. Queer parties, love, rejection and loneliness move through her body, out of place between the two continents. Stephanie Ricci captures the experiences of a free soul on the run, of one who doesn’t know where, how and when, with vivid sequences and conversations that impregnate a magnificent city portrait.
In order to reflect upon current practices of political dissent, we delve into the past and follow the experiences of a young artist. Invited to go underground in Portugal, during the second half of the 20th century, Margarida Tengarrinha played an important role in anti-fascist resistance, becoming a forger out of political activism. Given the anachronism, Clandestina is like a letter to a time yet to come, a premonition of the tragic possibility of History repeating itself.
Lithuania, 1948. War is over, but the country is left in ruins. 19-year-old Untė is a member of the Partisan movement resisting Soviet occupation. They do not fight on equal terms, but this desperate struggle will determine the future of the whole population. At the age of discovery of life, Untė discovers violence and treachery. The lines are blurred between the burning passion of his youth and the cause for which he is fighting. He will invest himself wholeheartedly, even if it means losing his innocence…
Estado de Excepção is a documentary about CITAC (Coimbra Theater Initiation Circle), a university theater group, revealing history since it was constituted in 1956 until the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. It is the history of the theater group university and, through it, the history of theater in Portugal, revealing two remarkable decades of the History of Portugal. Through the Academy of Coimbra, the documentary reproduces student life, the position of women in society, and the change in mentalities of being and being in the world. It reproduces the existing censorship and the fight against the dictatorship, the resistance to an exhausted regime, as well as the emerging contradictions of the democratic revolution. CITAC has a heritage of 50 years of experience in Coimbra. It carries with it the possibility of the theatrical and civic formation of thinking bodies, constituting a proper ball of a possible model, generation by generation, between studies, theater, and social drama.
One of the most far-reaching events in a human life is the birth of your baby. But life with a newborn can be so ordinary and at the same time all-embracing: the wash is drying in the corridor, the bathroom has to be cleaned. In the calm rhythm of the day, 'Ordinary Time' skims past authentic moments like this.
A dive, the midday sunlight filtering down through the water. The air in her lungs has to last until she can dislodge the abalone. Dives like these have been carried out in Japan for over 2000 years by the Ama-San.
Miguel —alias Tibars, alias “Djon África,” born and raised in Portugal— is a kindhearted Rastafarian who loves women and lives a carefree life. Until one day a stranger tells him he's the spitting image of his father, “a player and a crook.” His father, whom he never even knew! This intriguing discovery makes him change tack. Particularly when his grandmother, who always took care of him, finally tells him how his father was in prison; how sad Miguel was as a toddler when he couldn't see him; how his father was banished to Cape Verde. Miguel goes there to visit him. Who is this man?
A young woman struggles to overcome lost love, unplanned motherhood and ghostly apparitions.
Three Portuguese queer short films brought together in a program that charts an alternative path through converging universes, forming a new constellation of desires, fears, and struggles. Entre a Luz e o Nada by Joana de Sousa, Sob Influência by Ricardo Branco, and Uma Rapariga Imaterial by André Godinho are three cinematic gestures that explore techniques and narratives from science fiction to horror, seeking new ways to view and imagine other possibilities. After traveling through various festivals, these films can now be experienced together, in a mutual exploration of mysterious worlds, unsettling dreams, and singular visions.
During the summer holidays, a documentary-maker and his 12 year-old son stay at an abandoned hotel in Lisbon: an empty hotel like the one in the film The Shining.
Two men and a bird, trapped in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere, try to solve a mystery as it slowly devours them.
