A paralyzed man travels across the city of Porto, finding characters and scenes from popular tales along the way.
Set in the Lisbon during the festivities of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lovers and the old town. The story is about Cato, a nationalist politician who is charismatic and unscrupulous. He obsessively pursues Silvia, a mystical and mysterious young transvestite whom he meets at the festival. When Silvia runs into Vicente, a policeman who arrests transvestites and threatens them, Silvia must look towards blackmail to save herself. Compromising photos of Cato start to emerge among opposition parties and he must do all in his power to save his political career.
C and B are twin cats who live in a rundown harbour town, inhabited by downtrodden birds who, under the yoke of an oppressive and silencing power, have lost the ability to sing or fly. C is a restless dreamer and B is a pragmatic thinker, but both are determined to change their destiny and save the town. Dom Fradique unravels the adventures of these twin cats who, although choosing distinct paths, embody the transformation of both the place they inhabit as well as their own selves, echoing present day themes that unsettle younger generations and the challenges they face, on a social, ecological and political level. What they discover will change them, their lives, and their town forever.
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.
Vanitas is the new feature film by veteran Portuguese director Paulo Rocha. With a script by Regina Guimarães, the film brings together actresses Isabel Ruth and Joana Bárcia – no strangers to this director's world – in a story about a depressed fashion designer who falls in love with the daughter of one her tailors.
With the sea and urban Algarve as the backdrop, we follow a complete life cycle of a special shellfish called percebes, the goose barnacle.
A film by Regina Guimarães
An altarpiece and a portrait, whose composition obeys the digressions and ramblings of a handful of people, around their intimate relationship with God.
The evocation of light in the cinema leads the Character of the Man of Light to ponder over it, over its essence and its multiple manifestations in a revisitation of geographical places and memories.
Carolina, an aging local grande dame who works at a crossing point on the titular river, marries another late-in-life character, the dredging-boat operator Antonio. Not long after their union, she becomes intensely jealous of Antonio's fondness for their winsome goddaughter, Joana, and insinuates herself into a relationship brewing between Joana and a mystical gypsy gold salesman. Soon, tempers are flaring, mystical secrets are being revealed and death is hovering over the central characters.
A film by Regina Guimarães
Porto 2001 project, made in the prison of Paços de Ferreira. Nuno Cardoso, the play director, develops this work with the prisoners during the time period of one year. Documentation of the process: conversations with the prisoners in the context of the process of artistic creation and the theater project. Interviews and testimonials with various people who cross their experiences, their view of life and their life behind bars, with the development of the play.
Ivo and Tomás, two volunteered vagabonds who feed their souls of ways and great winds. From time to time they make a stop, renting their arms, the necessary time to be able to, provisions made, get on the road again. Once, with the sun at its peak and a burning heat, the desert that they are crossing seems to be endless. They run out of water… in the end of the day, without any strength left, they let themselves fall near to a dried bush. Ivo stares at the moon rising, as is saying farewell and whispering verses of a poem of a lawyer they’ve met before. It is then that he sees a far light. They set their way to that house…
From Jacques Prévert's poem “Petit déjeuner du matin”, Mau Dia experiences a dilation of the time in which the banality hides the lived drama. All elements are decomposed and then rebuilt - painted walls, orchestrated rain, spoiled actions, depicted or sung…
An act of passion, filmed in a church turned into a bar, on Easter 2003, and starring as many actors as the days of the year… Taking the sacred painting as a reference, the film questions the human condition: letting oneself die like Christ or betray scientifically like Peter?