Sapatos Pretos

Images and sounds expose the duality of Portugal during the days of WW2: a peaceful, god-loving, rural country, providing an escape route for over one hundred thousand European refugees to the Americas; and a political and cultural elite that disguised their Nazi inclinations just enough to play its neutral role in international politics.

This film is an attempt to disclose if Raul Brandão has left any trace, in Nespereira, Gumarães.

Throughout a year's work, a group of ten actors and a film director will work together on the creation of the characters and on the structure of the plot of a new film to come. Long sessions of discussion, rehearsals and endless repetitions serve to develop the most important scenes of that plot until it takes its ultimate form, in the film which results from this work.

Lúcia is misbegotten, unloved and the eternal widow of her own father. A cry of rage in bodily form...

Castro Laboreiro, in the far north of Portugal, is a place whose hills lead to a dead-end street. They call it the end-of-the-world’s pit. Men and wolves live abreast. Wolves leave their lair to freely attack the preys of men locked in their burrows. Both trapped in this huge pitfall called life from where no-one gets out alive.

Maria is a sweet child. She hasn’t father and doesn’t like her mother. She has a boyfriend, A bandit who would like to change his class.

A look at the lives of women in the fishing community of Caxinas, their daily tasks and the relations with men.

A moment in the life of a grievieng mother with the identity crisis of her teenage daughter. The mother insists on wanting to understand what she only should accept, the daughter can not explain what should be accepted.