Na Escama do Dragão
A reporter and a camera operator from a Macau TV channel embark on a journey to south of China.
Ivo M. Ferreira
Ivo M. Ferreira
Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Ivo M. Ferreira
The Empire Hotel is a 30-year-old landmark in Macau's old quarter, inhabited by characters with their own stories and struggles. It is also Maria's home. One day, the burden of keeping lives together and the hotel standing falls on her shoulders. A young man who left Macau two decades ago returns, intent on revenge and reclaiming his mother's fortune – half the hotel. Inside the casino, Maria sings Fado and exotic dancers perform. It is against this illusory backdrop that the man lays eyes on Maria for the first time; they’re both mesmerized. The film cuts back and forth between film noir-style scenes of Macau’s past and present.
Vicente goes to Egypt to cover some news for his newspaper, but then he decides to take the investigation further, along the Tropic of Cancer, further and further away (in time and space) from home, and his difficult love life. Therefore he revisits the lands explored 500 years before by the seafarers from his own people: Egypt, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Nepal, Laos, China... Eventually he must come back.
A character searches, in Macau, for a friend who lived there fifteen years before. Assisted by the letters written to him by his friend, he will reconstitute his past steps, trying to find him.
In 1971, António Lobo Antunes' life is brutally interrupted when he is drafted into the Portuguese Army to serve as a doctor in one of the worst zones of the Colonial War – the East of Angola. Away from everything dear he writes letters to his wife while he is immersed in an increasingly violent setting. While he moves between several military posts he falls in love for Africa and matures politically. At his side, an entire generation struggles and despairs for the return home. In the uncertainty of war events, only the letters can make him survive.
April 1974 saw the fall of a long lasting dictatorship. The young democracy developed in the midst of much social and political turmoil. The armed wing of a leftist group changed the future of one family - the father disappears without trace, the mother denies their past, and the son grows up with unanswered questions. As a young man, Pedro is determined to reach for answers, aided by his apparently batty grandmother. Collecting clues and meeting people who would rather prefer to remain forgotten. His inner journey leads him Portugal to Spanish through the deserted roads of Alentejo. Pedro will find himself, but there is a price to pay.
Short fiction film by Ivo M. Ferreira.
The series develops around cases of homicides that occurred during the summer, at the time of the economic and social crisis that affected Portugal.