Carloto Cotta
A film like a monument: Luz nos trópicos is a tribute to the rich greens of the Amazon and the forests of New England in winter, celebrating the indigenous peoples of both Americas and flowing as a film as freely as a winding river.
Struggling against the crisis in Portugal, a mother doubles up jobs to pay the bills since her husband is unemployed. Their teenage daughter tries to keep living everyday life even if the money is running short, which makes everything uneasy. Escaping from their common reality, they slowly become strangers to one another, as the tension grows in silence and in guilt.
A man and a woman with no apparent connection are involved in a bizarre bank robbery, resulting in their death. Their children (Lara and Simão), faced with the impasse in the police investigation, decide to unravel the mystery that led to the tragedy. What they discover is just the tip of the skein. Other deaths follow, all unrelated to view and entangled in a mysterious web that seems to have no end. What will be the next target?
Lisbon, Portugal, 1927. The writer and journalist Fernando Pessoa accepts from his boss the commission to create an advertising slogan for the drink Coca-Louca; but conservative government authorities consider the new drink as revolutionary as it is diabolical.
A disgraced soccer star seeks redemption but is exploited by a variety of causes hoping to capitalize on his celebrity.
An actress travels to Lisbon representing a film where she has a secondary role, regarding nobody else was available to go. In the Q&A in the Cinematheque she doesn't know how to answer the audience questions.
A delirious sci-fi riff on the Arabian Nights' 'Tale of the Hunchback', that submerges us in a technological dystopia reigned by Dalaya.com, a mega-corporation that forces its employees to 'relax' at company-run medieval reenactments.
In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.
A headlong dive into the deepest, silliest recesses of Abrantes’s unconscious.
Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells king Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. These are stories based on whatever will be happening in Portugal during the production time of the film. As in the book, these stories will be tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events. This film will be about the reality of a disgraced country, Portugal, under the effects of a global economic crisis.
Some of the chapters from Arabian Nights are adapted to a modern Portugal in this epic.
In which Scheherazade tells of how desolation invaded men : “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad ! The residents of a tower block in the suburbs will save parrots and piss inside lifts while surrounded by dead people and ghosts; including in fact a dog that…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.
Welcome to Lisbon: there are mermaids by the Tagus and birds flying over the old city; there are mad scientists and singing fish; lost tourist guides and lost tourists; fado and sad guitars. What a weird city you may think - but no. Lisbon is about being different, sarcastic, welcoming to foreigners even in an economic crisis. Different directors became fascinated by our strangeness. We became fascinated by these directors. The city is never the same in these four episodes, here in Lisbon.
An essay about disaffection in 7 segments inspired by Stendhal's seven stages of love, "De L'Amour" (1822). Most people are afraid of love because they are afraid of their deepest joy, delight and inner freedom.
In the autumn of 1810, the French forces of Marshal Masséna are invading Portugal and are temporarily halted by the Anglo-Portuguese army under Viscount Wellington at the Battle of Bussaco. As a bitter winter approaches, Wellington withdraws his troops towards the fortifications he has prepared in secret at the Lines of Torres Vedras. Using a scorched earth defence, he forces the inhabitants to evacuate the land in front of the Lines and destroys all supplies which could be useful to the French. The film illustrates these dramatic events by a series of vignettes which show the effects on combatants, both regular soldiers and guerrillas, and on the civilian population.
Passionate romance, brutal treachery, and selfless nobility are set against the background of Napoleon’s 1810 invasion of Portugal in Valeria Sarmiento’s intimate epic.
Follows a jealous countess, a wealthy businessman, and a young orphaned boy across Portugal, France, Italy and Brazil where they connect with a variety of mysterious individuals.
Follows a jealous countess, a wealthy businessman, and a young orphaned boy across Portugal, France, Italy and Brazil where they connect with a variety of mysterious individuals.
Violante, a young and beautiful catholic nun, is facing a few marital issues with her husband Jesus Christ - who stalks her through the dark corners of a decaying convent and seeks to punish her for her (alleged) sins. In a dark stormy night they struggle to win each other to their personal points of view. She quotes the bible in terms of unconditional love - He does the same in terms of capital punishment. But are His manly insecurities based on solid grounds? After escaping His jealous rage, the nun lurks through the dark alleys and the bars like a vampire. Doomed to loneliness, all she wants is a Man. And who can this Man be?
A young man under house arrest spends his time in the best way he can by making some tattoos. His relative peace is strangely disturbed when he's attacked and robbed by three kids from the neighborhood. From then on, he'll try to find the kids who took his money and maybe give them a lesson. But with those actions, comes the reflection of how things were and are in this place filled with violence and hostility. Is change possible?
Diana is a young man about to enter adulthood. She lives with her father, Gabriel, a game machine dealer, and Magdalene, the stepmother, alongside those working in a hair salon in a shopping center. One day, Diana discovers that Magdalene not only keeps a secret relationship with Michael, the security center and instructor in the gym of the neighborhood, as resumed his old habit of playing. Not to allow the stepmother to his father do the same as her mother had done to her, Diana decides to intervene, approaching the Magdalene lover.
A transvestite tries to erase any past history of herself as a male. Struggling with a young male lover and a problematic son.
Quitterie, a 40 year-old woman, relives the great love for her deceased 18 year-old Japanese partner, by successively meeting up with young strangers.
A young French actress in Lisbon to shoot a movie is intrigued by a nun she sees kneeling in the chapel where she is filming.
Werner Schroeter directed this dark and surreal tale of a man determined to save a lost lover from a grim fate at the hands of a violent mob. The city of Santa Maria is falling into chaos as an armed military faction is poised to take power in a coup d'etat. Ossorio used to call Santa Maria home, and he has returned in its darkest hour to find the woman he loves, hoping to rescue her from the violence that is lurks around the corner. As Ossorio searches for his love, he meets Victoria in a shabby hotel, who in turn introduces him to her father Barcala, who for the right price is willing to take Ossorio and another passenger away on his boat. While Ossorio is willing to pay Barcala what he wants, can he find the mysterious woman before the ship sets sail?
The darkness of night, a barely lit place, motorbikes flirting with danger: a group of teenagers at a crossroads playing chicken with unaware passing cars. Jota (Eduardo Frazão) stands out from this group, unclassifiable; his destiny has no straight lines save those on the asphalt. Jota lives in permanent conflict with everything and everybody in his small town. No room for stillness. And then comes Margarida (Ana Moreira). Jota has no inside, Margarida has no outside. In spite of, or because of, that, they meet. What can they do? They can just ride, they can get away with it even if its all messed up. Love is to be lived.
After breaking up with her boyfriend, a woman named Odete (Ana Cristina De Oliveira) descends into madness and claims to be pregnant with the child of Rui's (Nuno Gil) late lover, Pedro (João Carreira). As grief-stricken Rui mourns Pedro's death, Odete tries to transform herself into Pedro.
There are two months to the end of High School Spanish classes in Lisbon and it's time to decide the destination for the end of year trip. That decision will cause a real "Civil War" between two irreconcilable groups: the "class nerd", who propose the typical cultural trip to Paris, and "freeloaders" who prefer to enjoy the week in Benidorm, the "New York's Costa Blanca ".
Francisco, behave! I Know it's your birthday, you are thirty now, it's carnival, you've dressed as a cowboy for the school party and you are surrounded by kids you hate. But that's no reason to be so annoying... Francisco, repeat after me: "Up to your 30s you have the face God has given you. After that, you get the face you deserve".
