Paulo Branco

A pagan tradition in a village in the countryside of Portugal leaves painful traces in a group of young teenagers. 25 years later, when they meet again, the past resurfaces and tragedy sets in.

In 1918, Maria Adelaide Coelho da Cunha, heiress and owner of the Diário de Notícias, leaves the social, cultural and family luxury in which she lives to escape with a petty chauffeur, 26 years younger.

Dreaming of great adventures and of standing up for his homeland, a young Portuguese man enlists in the army during World War I and is sent to the front line in Mozambique, Africa. Left behind by his platoon, he sets out on a grueling trek across the mystic Makua native land, walking for over a thousand kilometers, in search of his dream.

A relation between two strangers who met on social media reaches unthinkable proportions.

A documentary that makes a retrospective of portuguese director António-Pedro Vasconcelos' life and work on cinema and television.

The chronicle of a Portuguese family that owns one of the largest estates in Europe, on the south bank of the River Tagus. The Domain delves deeply into the secrets of their homestead, portraying the historical, political, economic and social life of Portugal, since the 1940's to these days.

Nora comes out of prison. She only has one thing in mind: finding a youg neo-punk artist she admires, Léa. Mirror of one another, these two soulmates will get to know each other and rebuild their lives together.

In the same year that war broke in the Portuguese colonies, another conflict was taking place between the most powerful football clubs in the country. The target: a young player from Mozambique named Eusébio da Silva Ferreira...

Akerman, Monteiro, Oliveira, Ruiz, Schroeter and Wenders are among the directors he produced: Deux, trois fois Branco is a portrait of Portuguese producer Paulo Branco, between life and legend.

The story of the adventures, in the twilight of the eighteenth century, of a singular couple formed by a little orphan with mysterious origins and his young Italian nurse of a similarly uncertain birth. They lead us in their wake, from Rome to Paris, from Lisbon to London, from Parma to Venice. Always followed in the shadows, for obscure reasons, by a suspicious-looking Calabrian and a troubling cardinal, they make us explore the dark intrigues of the Vatican, the pangs of a fatal passion, a gruesome duel, banter at the court of Versailles and the convulsions of the French Revolution.

With no career expectations, a temperamental young woman gave in to a job as a maid in a hotel. Makes the beds, replaces the towels, replaces the soaps. One day she discovers a suitcase left behind by a whimsical French tourist, inside which she finds a lime green canary, a natural yogurt and a five hundred euro envelope.

Final feature film by portuguese director José Fonseca e Costa.

Zico has a thirst for elsewhere. He embarks on a cargo shop in Le Havre. Soon, tensions with the rest of the crew and repeated damages undermine his dreams of adventures.

Set in the 1950s Soviet Union, centers on a young artist who is commissioned to create Stalin's monument and must go through KGB scrutiny.

At the end of the nineteenth century, two inexperienced Portuguese colonizers, with a vague intention of civilizing the colonies, disembark in a remote part of the Congo River in order to coordinate a trading post. As time goes by, they become increasingly demoralized by their inability to profit from the ivory trade. A mutual feeling of distrust and misunderstadings with the locals isolate them at the heart of the tropical jungle. Faced with each other, they begin a journey towards the abyss.

Ondine and Paul have loved each other. When she leaves him, he swears not to love again. To prove this to himself, he pursues the beautiful Camille, whom he intends to seduce and abandon. But Camille puts a spell on Paul whom she desires for herself alone. And, while falling under Camille’s charms, Paul has to deal with the memory of his past love.

A man and a woman share their musings on love and freedom one summer night. The couple’s conversation meanders through memories, unspoken desires and passion through poetic dialogue.

On a night of April 1957, Albertine, a brillant and rebel 19-year-old girl, jumps from the wall of the prison where she’s serving a sentence for a holdup. In her fall, a bone from her ankle breaks: the astragal. She is rescued by Julien, a justice fugitive, and so is born a burning passion between them. He takes her to Paris and hides her. But while he leads his gangster life here and there, the young woman struggles for her freedom and against the wounds inflicted by Julien’s absence, and writes poetry.

It’s 1942, and Portugal languishes under dictatorship and WWII rages just beyond its borders. Secrets, half-truths, and mistrust prevail in the state security office of chief inspector Varga, who makes professional privilege a cover for his unprofessional interest in a boldly carnal refugee and her alleged brother. Director/writer Saboga (screenwriter for Raúl Ruiz’s MYSTERIES OF LISBON) saturates the dark world of this predatory tale with steamy eroticism and paranoia, starting with the incestuous desires of his bi-curious adolescent daughter and including the family maid.

On the night of New Year's Eve, a small group penetrates into the room of an old hotel in ruins. Carmine, the oldest of the group, poses a challenge to one of the men, Furio: he has 4 months to restore the hotel and inaugurate it with great pomp. Aware of the difficulties but anxious to prove the point, Furio accepts encouraged by his wife Margo who believes that this assignment will allow the couple to rediscover the lost momentum.

When Frédi loses his mother, he realizes she has passed her healing gift on to him. Frédi rejects it totally, tangled up in his own unhappiness, until a fatal accident changes everything. He is forced to acknowledge that he had healing hands.

A film about General Humberto Delgado's brutal assassination by the Portuguese fascist police in 1965.

A woman recovering from a personal tragedy imprisons a man she met at a party, shutting him in a room of a building demolition.

Her mother has just died. Her father is not what she had thought. Caught between an uncertain past, which she knows only through the photographs her mother has left behind, and the prospect of a marriage that she does not really want, Elisa sets out to discover the truth. But will she recognize it when she finds it?

An in-depth documentary about the making of David Cronenberg's feature film, Cosmopolis (2012), an adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel of the same name.

Salvador knew Contança and Santiago. He did not know, but admired, Laurence. Among them, Laurence knew Santiago. Constance did not know Laurence. Only Santiago knew Laurence, Constança and Salvador.

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.

Félix, a Down syndrome child who is passionate about soccer gets the opportunity to take part in the main soccer team in a match against the rival school.

Humberto hanged himself. Catarina, Paulo and Victor want the company where Humberto used to work for to take responsibility in his death, leading them to kidnappe the company’s director in an act of despair. Who is Humberto? What company is that? In which paths will he take us, after his death? Cinerama is an edgy, enigmatic, but not distant film that brings up genres of cinema as well as other forms of art like dance, theatre and poetry. The film reflects ways of being in life.

Four Portuguese poker players go on a trip to Las Vegas.

Exiled from her country since her husband's murder ten years earlier, Judith lives in Marseille with her three children. After having refused to see her family for years, Judith, in spite of her fears and secrets, allows herself to be influenced by her children's wishes and accepts an invitation to their cousin's wedding. They set off to spend a summer in the old country, discovering their roots and their past. But Judith's return revives old hatreds between rival clans. The spiral of violence is inexorably set in motion, blood will tell...

Carlos is a famous journalist at the age of 55. His wife, Ada, is the opposite of her husband, a woman with a very active social life, and she is happy and seductive. One day, Carlos accidentally opens a text message on Ada’s cellular telephone. A new world reveals itself before his eyes when he discovers that his wife is seeing another man. With the help of his friend with whom he goes to live, Carlos discovers a universe of virtual lovers and electronic adultery.

In oPorto there is a club, Imperatriz, where everything is permitted. A moment in which all intersect in the dark night.

After the structural collapse at a construction site, Paulo loses his job because he denounces the situation to the authorities.

Après que son père eut quitté le foyer pour une autre femme, Martial, 16 ans, doit déménager avec sa mère, Sabine, pour un appartement plus modeste. Nouveau quartier, nouveau lycée, Martial a du mal à s'intégrer. Sa mère propose de l'aider, mais maladroite et fantasque, elle ne fait qu'envenimer la situation...

Dora divides her time between her work as a beautician, her policeman husband António, and her involvement in left-wing politics. A tale of love and how we must learn to cherish it against all odds in the pursuit of happiness.

A loner, narcissistic and suicidal teenager attracts most of the people he meets like a fatal aura, a black light. He falls deeply in love with Teresa but does she exist or is she a mere figment, an image, a reflection? Teresa is an apparition. A pretext for an amoral violent uprising, for doomed love.

A crematorium worker repeatedly breaks into a woman's house at night to help with housework.

Whilst seeking out locations in the South of France for his next film, director Luc Moullet comes across a male corpse. He immediately decides to use this to his advantage. By swapping his passport with that of the dead man, Moullet hopes that the world will believe he is dead, thereby ensuring a renewed interest in his work. Unfortunately, the scheme backfires, since the dead man was someone rather important...

The tough lives of two ordinary individuals: Alex, an accountant and his wife Béatrice, a taxi driver.

A writer awakens one day to find a strange but beautiful woman in bed with him. He quickly falls in love with her, thinking he has found his muse, but as time passes she becomes more and more unattainable.

Ricardo is a transvestite. After a failed attempt of suicide, he has to come back to his roots and to relearn how to live with the inspiring help of his sister and, mostly, of his nephew Vasco, who has Down syndrome.

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

João is a freelance television journalist. When he begins a new story about an old pigeon breeder in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Lisbon, João meets Ana, his teenage granddaughter, a mysterious character who is beginning to exercise an irresistible fascination for him. With the time João starts to lose the interest in the pigeon breeder and begins to take an interest in Ana and her world, which she only shares with another abandoned kid, until she realizes that her life is full of dark stories.

Since 1980 German institutions send teens to the south of Portugal under experimental projects of social rehabilitation. That's how Katrin comes to Alentejo. She will establish a unique relationship with the surrounding environment, a situation exacerbated by the harshness of the landscape and the emptiness of a socially desertified region. Katrin, twith Julia and Pedro, will build a refuge in a no-man's-land...

An urban family inherits an old country house located in a small village. Upon their arrival they try to adapt to the new lifestyle, but they soon learn that the village is overshadowed by superstition and mysterious folklore. As they are plagued by strange events, they learn more about the history of their family, and slowly begin to believe by inheriting the house, they also inherited a curse.

A portrait of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt whose lavish, sexual paintings came to symbolize the art nouveau style of the late 19th and early 20th century.

He and she don't know each other. They randomly meet at a gas station, while drifting. "Where are we going? Far away. Where is that? Near."

Paul, depressed from his recent break-up with Anna, returns home to Paris and moves back in with his divorced father and amorous younger brother, Jonathan. While his carefree sibling and doting father try in vain to cheer him up, a visit from his mother seems to be the only thing that brings him joy. When Paul is then left in the house to brood and talk to one of his brother's girlfriends.

A group of drop-outs, losers and criminals are travelling in a stolen Mercedes seemingly aimlessly along numerous derelict houses and impassable roads to eventually end up on an old decaying state farm in Crimea, the southern tip of the former Soviet Union, where the mother, wife and daughter of one of them live. The men kill time with smoking, drinking and staring in front of them, but an undercurrent tension is brewing. On the last night they have a party that is equally destructive as their life

In the wake of his daughter's disappearance, a father wallowing in grief feeds his desire to find her with unusual methods.

The complex relationship between master and servant is explored in director João Botelho's adaptation of Denis Diderot's popular novel Jacques le Fataliste et Son Maître. As Tiago (Rogério Samora) drives his master (André Gomes) through the Portuguese countryside to an unspecified destination, the traveling pair embark on a series of highly philosophical discussions. Flowing with tales of his life in the military and previous sexual escapades, Tiago trades a series of tales with his rapt passenger, including the story of a vengeful spurned lover who plots revenge on the nobleman who rejected her by transforming a prostitute into a society lady and convincing him to marry the tainted bride.

Laura works as a newscaster and José Maria as a stockbroker, and while they live in the same housing complex, their lives never cross directly. Nevertheless, he watches her from a distance, seeing all her movements without her knowledge. But their lives finally meet when he is invited onto her news program. From there, a romance begins which coincides with the desire of two beings who finally find a reason to seek love once again.

Ordo Tupikos, a french sailor with greek origins, discover that his first wife, Estelle, with whom he had remained married a few months only 16 years earlier, is now a famous movie star called Louise Sandoli. But, more than her name, everything about Louise seems to have changed. Ordo decides to meet Estelle again, after all these years, to know what it's all about...

In Tangiers where he traveled for his work, a man finds the woman he loved, and attempts to revive their romance though it ended some 30 years earlier.

At Christmas time, 19 year old Simon returns home to visit his dysfunctional family with Louise, a fearless girl he met during his train ride. While Simon struggles to cope with the growing distance between him and his parents, he starts to examine his feelings when Louise develop a liaison of her own with his childhood friend Mathieu.

Portugal, 1917. The country is experiencing a great political and social agitation and it is said that in Fatima the virgin appeared to three little shepherds. Salomé, a young lady from the province, is one of the many girls who cheers Lisbon brothels, but she is such a special girl that a rich man invites her to live in his house and presents her to the high society of Lisbon. But her past will not stop chasing her and Salomé, who thought that this would be the beginning of a new life, will eventually lose everything by becoming an involuntary character of this miracle that agitated the country...

Manoel de Oliveira directs José Régio's historical epic of religious and political power struggles. King Sebastião plans to make Portugal the world's Fifth Empire.

A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.

When her mother moves in, the life of a writer gets crowded.

Short documentary about football (soccer) supporters in Portugal

An authentic and convincing story of a small boy, son of a disrupted young couple, with all the typical hostile reactions about his mother's new love relationship and a behavior showing a mixture of love and resentment towards her, ending in a curious and somewhat moving friendship between the child and a Russian migrant worker who in a certain way replaces his estranged father.

Alexandra Lencastre plays a woman who believes she is President of the U.S.A.

João Vuvu, lives alone in a house that requires regeneration but due to being alone he is unable to do the work. On his son's release from prison and João's ensuing deception triggers a series of somber events.

Francisco just got out of prison after a six year sentence and is now a free man. He wants to change, and after a few days sleeping in the subway tunnels, and some small jobs, he finally gets a room on a cheap hotel. He changes his looks, gets a job, lives his life.

Sexy, gritty and as provocative as a lap dance, The Bathers takes an insider's look at the lives of six women working as dancers at a seedy Parisian peep show. Governed by their overprotective boss, the girls' routine of glittery neon lights and lecherous customers is soon disrupted when an enigmatic stranger enters the scene. Now, drugs, sex and bickering all take a back seat as the girls unite to save this man haunted by a mysterious past and unforgiving demons. A fascinating glimpse into a world of back alleys and primal instincts, The Bathers transports us to a netherworld where the show always goes on.

Mariana is a 17 year old girl, who, after being rapped by drug addict, finds out she's pregnant and, in her path, discovers how difficult it can be entering adulthood.

A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.

A man who grew up in the '80s, in the midst of the pirate-radio scene, works now at a big, modern radio station, but still holds on to his love for a mysterious female lead singer of a now long gone band. He sets himself to start another pirate-radio, now unlegalized, trying to find her.

An intriguing story about a family and a manor house (where some terrible crimes were committed in the past by a member of that family) adapted from a novel with the same title by Tabajara Ruas.

A father is scheming to have his slightly mental daughter from an earlier marriage killed by allowing a murderous psychopath to be released from the asylum and led to his house. However, the psychopath and the daughter fall for each other.

In Northern Norway during the 1860s, a little girl named Dina accidentally causes her mother's death. Overcome with grief, her father refuses to raise her, leaving her in the care of the household servants. Dina grows up wild and unmanageable, with her only friend being the stable boy, Tomas. She summons her mother's ghost and develops a strange fascination with death as well as a passion for living.

Isabelle Huppert stars as a pair of twin sisters in Werner Schroeter's gorgeously composed and utterly berserk opus stuffed to overflowing with sailors, drag queens, suicides, cemeteries, doppelgängers, fickle foxes and operatic arias.

Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family.

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 wealthy landowner, "The Dauphin," enjoys a decadent life of hunting, drinking, and womanizing. He oversees his estate, the Laguna, with his barren wife, his one-armed manservant, and his treasured guard dog. When a sportsman (the film’s narrator) comes to the estate for his annual duck-hunting excursion, he discovers the body of the landowner’s wife floating in the lagoon and the manservant dead on his master’s bed. The Dauphin and his dog are nowhere to be found except for the mysterious barking sounds heard over the lagoon.

No overview found.

In custody after she murders her middle aged photographer lover, a fourteen year old Pam reflects back on the bohemian life she spent with her mother Lily, a free spirited cabaret performer. Lily tried to elevate her stripper performances from the level of erotic spectacle to artistic expression as she dragged her young daughter from nightclub to nightclub and hotel to hotel, but ultimately lost her at nine to the Paris child authorities.

During the Gulf War, the paths of several groups of characters cross in France’s most desert-like region. The cast is as follows: An astrophysician who works alone with Geraldine in an observatory high in the mountains. He’d like to seduce Geraldine, but she seems to prefer the shepherd who’s been relegated to a shabby hut nearby. A group of filmmakers stuck in the middle of the countryside after their crew went on strike because lunch never turned up. A squadron of stupid soldiers who consider even the most minor incident to be proof of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of France. A maniacal geologist, oblivious of everything, who continues to search for the traces of a tectonic Big Bang in the most inaccessible places.

Twenty-five years after leaving school, a group of former students decide to organise a reunion. But, contrary to expectations, these "old boys" realise that time has accentuated their differences. The atmosphere is tense, the conversation taut and the old grudges resurface in no time.

During one winter night, a Portuguese teenager, Alvaro, loses his life in a fight between a youth gang and the cops in a suburb of Paris. Cidalia, a 36 year old cleaning woman, his mother, decides to defy the code of silence of the Portuguese community and tries to find the truth. She losses her friends, her job and her family but gains a life.

The story is about a woman who is going to Trieste (a city in Italy) to search for informations about a writer who has never written.

The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to. But the roles he is offered -- a flashy TV show and a hectic last-minute replacement in an English-language film of Joyce's Ulysses -- finally convince him that it's time to retire.

An impossible love. Two young people who love each other. Vera and João can’t find in this life the space, time, or identity to resolve their love story.

Ana lives in a little village by the sea, with her husband and daughter. He decides to leave for a few days. That seems to be the ideal solution, because Ana needs to finish a work she has been doing for a long time. But her concentration seems threatened when she starts doing her daily walks by the village and the beach: she saves a stranger from death in the sea, meets young Alexandre and Emilia, and her friend Vera turns up in her house. And then, everything changes…

Manoel de Oliveira's autobiographical documentary about returning to his hometown.

A touching and tragic real life story about a group of Portuguese fishermen who get caught in the middle of a storm in the Tejo river (Lisbon) and struggle to survive.

The story of Father Antonio Vieira, a 17th-century Portuguese priest who lived in Brazil and worked for better treatment of the Indians and to abolish slavery.

Zé Alberto and Laura are lovers, and have a clandestine and permanently threatened relationship. Zé Alberto is married to Fernanda, Laura's sister, whose husband is in prison for murder. Fernanda is aware of Laura's relationship with her husband and constantly threatens them to tell Armando everything. Laura and Armando have a daughter - Sónia - whose greatest defect is greediness and the highest quality to cover up her mother's romance with her uncle. The fear of the two lovers increases and events precipitate when they receive the news that Armando is about to go on parole ...

The story of a family of bull fighters.

Monteiro moved far away from the visual opulence defined by his earlier films with his inspired adaptation of radical Swiss writer Robert Walser’s anti-fairy tale. Carefully restricting the image track, Monteiro maintains an almost totally black screen in order to focus instead on the voices of Snow White, the Prince, the Queen and the Hunter, engaged in an extended debate about love, free will and the events leading up to the fateful attempt on the maiden’s life. Despite its visual austerity, Snow White is haunted by the arresting images with which it begins – infamous black-and-white photographs of Walser lying dead in the snow after his heart attack outside a Swiss asylum at the age of seventy-eight, a strange realization of the “death of the author” so central to postmodern literary criticism.

This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, which is surrounded with nothing else but frost. It is bitterly cold weather — without snow. Even in this bewildered cold hundreds of people are standing around the circus tent, which is put up in the main square, to see — as the outcome of their wait — the chief attraction, the stuffed carcass of a real whale. The people are coming from everywhere. From the neighboring settlings, even from quite far away parts of the country. They are following this clumsy monster as a dumb, faceless, rag-wearing crowd. This strange state of affairs — the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost — disturbs the order of the small town. Ambitious personages of the story feel they can take advantage of this situation. The tension growing to the unbearable is brought to explosion by the figure of the Prince, who is pretending facelessness. Even his mere appearance is enough to break loose destructive emotions...

A few fugitives... And a very, very long way to freedom.

A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.

Feature film

Arthur is a history teacher who lives alone in Paris after having broken up with Claire. He is a sensitive man, full of existential doubts and questions. He has to go to Lisbon to meet an eminent historian whose work is the subject of his thesis. Having just made up with Claire, he decides to take her along. She's an ideal travel companion and it seems their relationship has not yet exhausted its potential. But moving from Lisbon to Oporto, their fantasy of a second honeymoon clashes with the reality of a world on the verge of a nightmare.

Micheline, who is pregnant, lives in a home for women from which she tries to observe the world with calm and serenity. Among other women of the home who are also pregnant the frequently asked question is whether they will keep their baby or not.

The film concerns an old Irish immigrant living in London who is looking back over his life. He recalls his early life in the west of Ireland, his first love, emigrating to England, searching for his brother Joe, who disappeared after he emigrated several years previously. His marriage and wife's later depth is also remembered.

In order to make some much-needed cash for himself, 65-year-old Portuguese prison inmate Eugenio impersonates a young woman and begins a romantic correspondence with a lonely Portuguese truck-driver living in Boston, convincing him that her tragic life has culminated in financial dire straits so he will send money. At first Eugenio's sister Idalina assists him in creating the character of Maria da Luz. Touched by her sweetness and apparent loving nature, the trucker willingly sends her money. When Idalina starts fearing they will be caught, she backs out of her arrangement with Eugenio who then convinces his young cellmate Vasco to help write the letters and even sends a picture of himself at age seven to "prove" that Maria has a young son. As prison life exacts an increasingly heavy toll upon Eugenio's health, his feminine alter-ego helps sustain him.

Camille is an emancipated 30-something woman who has no desire to settle down and have a family, preferring to coast along on a succession of ephemeral relationships and one-night stands. However, her lifestyle fails to satisfy her fully, and in a moment of depression she runs into a complete stranger, Alexis, whom she instantly falls in love with. Alexis, alas, is married, with two children, and works for the Socialist Party. None of this is going to deter Camille though…

After receiving a visit from a messenger of God, João de Deus wins his buddy's girlfriend through a roll of the dice.

What is the nature of life? What is the nature of art? How can art influence our lives? These are the questions of this movie. The main character, a man who lives both in the world of dreams and reality, searches his past, in order to understand its meaning. He has meetings with the ghosts of his dead friend, his dead lover, his dead father and Pessoa, the great portuguese writer. These four encounters give him clues about what he is looking for. Beside that, he finds himself in front of art, discovering how it modifies our comprehension of life. It's based in one of Tabucci's (the italian writer)books: "Requiem". This few lines cannot resume the greatness of this movie. The last thing I can say is: If you like art, I recommend you to see it. If you ever wonder about the nature of dreams, or you live in dreams half of the time, I think you'll feel like this movie was made for you.

Young Jesus (Joaquim Oliviera) is taken on a vacation by his parents (Rita Blanco, Adriano Luz) to a deserted beach resort. They accidentally fall into overnight wealth after Jesus digs in the sand, uncovering a large drug stash. Others characters intersecting here include an alcoholic actress, a philandering banker, a general trafficking in arms, priests who close their church and head north as hitchhikers, politicians who watch an all-girl production of Julius Caesar, and beggars who recite a children's story in a huge heap of trash.

A philosophy teacher restless with the need to do something with his life meets a young woman suspected of driving an artist to his death. He finds the very simple Cecilia irritating but develops a sexual rapport with her. Obsessed with the need to own and tormented by her inability to respond to him, he becomes increasingly violent in a quest he can't name - a quest that slowly begins to undermine his certainties.

In today's Alentejo, a story of love and death based in a real criminal case.

Madeleine is with her lover, Jean-Paul, when her husband arrives home and catches the two together. Madeleine kills her husband and tells Jean-Paul to flee before the police arrive. After Jean-Paul drives away, he picks up a hitchhiker. When the car, stolen by the hitchhiker, explodes, police believe the dead hitchhiker is Jean-Paul. Madeleine takes up with Jean-Paul's brother, Bastien, while Jean-Paul, arriving in Strasbourg, is mistaken for the heir to a fortune. The detective on the case spends more time writing crime novels than investigating real-life crimes.

An anthology film drama featuring a poetic mirror structure based on existential identity. In "The Immortals," adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old father, and his 60-year-old son, contemplate senility and death. "Suzy," from an Antonio Patricio story, is set in the '30s when a young courtesan dies on the operating table. "Mother of the River" is from an Agustina Bessa-Luis fable about eternal life.

When she lands up in the middle of nowhere, Séréna, a rather thoughtless young woman, is supposed to marry Hubert, a country squire she came into contact with through the classifieds in "Le Chasseur Français", a magazine for hunters. But she gets to know Roland, a bachelor farmer who develops an instant burning passion for her. Prepared to do anything for her, he goes as far as to holdup banks to secure the good life she longs for. Although she confesses (wrongly) that she suffers from AIDS, he is in no way discouraged. Séréna accepts to marry Roland but on her wedding night she balks at taking the "midnight exam". She runs away and meets Antoine, a married writer, who hides her in the attic of his house, without his wife knowing it.

Nakaura of Julian (Julião Nakaura), a priest of the Society of Jesus, was one of four young ambassadors sent to Rome by the Jesuits in 1538, as proof that Japan had converted to Christianity. Fifty years after the mission, which so fascinated European royalty, Julian was forced again to prove his faith, only this time before a Shogun, who wanted to force him to abandon his religion. Julian resists, as does Miguel Chijiwa, a fellow at the embassy to Rome, who become a martyr. Betrayed by Cristóvão Ferreira, who cannot bear the torture, Julian suffers an inglorious death ... or maybe not.

At her son's funeral, Solange, a lawyer famous for losing hopeless cases, agrees to defend René, her son's age, accused of murdering his wealthy aunt, Jeanne, who's part of the Franco-Belgian Psychoanalytic Society, known for odd views and methods. She reads Jeanne's journal, documenting René's criminal tendencies. Solange believes him innocent, manipulated into the murder or framed. Odd psychiatrists turn up, including Georges Didier, who runs FBPS, and his rival, Christian, who believes crime originates in a story's taking hold of a person. After the verdict, René and Solange's relationship changes, Georges and his society commit a bizarre act, and the police record Solange's story.

A technical problem aboard a transatlantic flight forces a plane to land in Porto Santo, the small island of Madeira's archipelago where, according to a legend, Christopher Columbus the 15th century navigator, lived for a while and entertained a sexual relationship with a widow and her nubile daughter. A girl photo journalist profits to stay the extra-needed days for repair, to visit the island - and eventually she'll become part of complex relationships among some of the secluded people of the island. Also, a yacht lost in the high seas in 1947 reappears from the misty horizon 50 years later - to unite Fanny and João, a contemporary navigator.

After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live.

A moving world of spirits and ghosts, condemned to brush against one another without really meeting since they have all emerged from a single perpetual dream: that of a young man who no longer wants to wake up, immersed as he is in this world of fascinating spectres.

A trucker, an accountant, a former plumber hospitalised after a suicide attempt... Presided over by the accountant, the three families decide to buy a truck, a trucker's dream. The father, practical joker, and larger-than-life lover, keeps a watchful eye. The children are his accomplices. One is his heroine. His daughter is his other heroine. A puzzle of life's desires in which all veers into the imaginary, into dreams of far-off lands.

Independent Parisian doctor Annie finds herself in an emotional tangle when she tries to help single-minded HIV-positive patient Laurent and embarks on a brief affair with conceited actor Richard.

Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.

Michel and Juliette have just broken up over Michel's affair with the much younger Romance. Alice and Nicolas are still together, but maybe this is because Nicolas does not know of Alice's affair with handsome sports photographer Gaspard. This sly sex comedy, the sophomore effort of Belgian filmmaker Lucas Belvaux, follows the covert sexual misadventures of the troubled foursome.

Armed with camcorders, French artist Sophie Calle and American photographer Greg Shephard head West across the United States in his Cadillac convertible to produce and document a narrative of their journey and relationship.

After fatally shooting a stalker, Parisian bar-maid Lea must live the life of the title reptile. At the time of the killing she was living with Francis, a much older American ex-con. After committing the murder, the fleeing and frightened Lea is saved by Paris paper boys Jean and Luc. Later she tells her sad story to hard-drinking Moskowitz, a middle-aged cop who secretly desires her. His unrequited love leads to tragedy. Meanwhile, Lea continues living with Francis, but also shacks up with Luc while trying to avoid the jealous cop.

Alice faces a lot of trouble to make a film about artist Marcel Duchamp. She randomly chooses musician Antônio for the main part, and ends up having an affair with him. (imdb)

Four intertwining stories of bizarre occurrences in Paris featuring a man who was stolen away by fairies, a professor who becomes a tramp, the lovers who inherit a chateau – and the last tale that connects all that has gone before.

This French language drama from Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira takes an ironic look at the pretentiousness of international jet-setters while simultaneously examining an obsessive romantic relationship between an aging Lothario and a beautiful married woman. The tale begins at a garden party in a lovely villa in the Azores held by Rogerio and Leonor for handsome, middle-aged Michel and his mistress Irene, a noted Greek movie star. The guests aren't there long before an obvious attraction between Leonor and Michel prompts them to head for a private beach (their tryst, if there was one, occurs off-camera). Five years later, the foursome again meet for a garden party and once again they pair off after spending much time discussing gender differences, emotion, social insight and exchanging witty bon mots.

A few stories are mixed, but all starts with Claire who one day brings back to Gregoire one of his books found at the university. Gregoire is the tenebrous romantic king, and Claire falls in love with him. But there is also Gregoire's circle, his disturbing neighbour, his maybe crazy grandmother Diane, his former teacher Hugo. And this is mixed up with Sebastien's attempts to seduce Claire then her mother Anne. And also Claire's psychiatrist.

A slow, dialogue-free film about a woman's journey in Siberia.

Philippe is a middle-aged painter, he lives with Annie : they have two kids. Just after they split up, Philippe meets Justine. He starts thinking about love, the relationship between former lovers..

In this French-Portuguese film -- directed by Jacques Rivette's screenplay collaborator Christine Laurent -- French vocalist Laure Constant (Laurence Cote) goes to Montevideo, Uruguay, to see her old lover Colossus (Jose Olivera), but when he's a no-show, she becomes involved with several other men, while listening to advice from some older French women who are costume designers. Shown at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival.

This European thriller, set in Sri Lanka, attempts to expound upon the philosophical implications of life, death, and memory. JB, an academic famed for his studies of oriental culture and alcoholic who has never recovered from his wife's suicide, returns to Sri Lanka to translate a book written on glass. It is supposed to contain Buddha's discourse upon memory. While he is there, an attractive nurse, Julia asks him to assist a young boy who wants to locate his father who is now living in a Tamil-occupied area. The Tamil terrorists will kill any trespassers. Compounding JB's conflict in deciding to go is that his former home where he lived with his wife is in that area. Unbeknownst to him, the boy is really a Tamil spy.

Portugal, late 1940's. André must leave the country after running away from prison. In Oporto some friends get him a guide, Lambaça, a smuggler who knows very well the Trás-os-Montes border from Portugal to Spain.

Pierre, a middle-aged tourist guide, is the victim of a sudden failure : he does not recognize anything about him any longer. He goes back home and in his apartment he finds a mysterious young man who tells him he is here to avenge a young woman who has taken her own life. What share of responsibility does Pierre hold in this situation?

Catalyst in the story of crossed paths is a 1957 Ford Fairlane being driven through Portugal’s Alentejo region to a new owner. Film’s overly protracted opening has car’s drivers (Filipe Cochofel, Antonio Pedro Figueiredo) joy riding the night away until the roadster breaks down. Momentum picks up at sunrise with their attempts to fix the car. A retired mechanic-turned-beekeeper with a heart condition (Canto e Castro) does the trick and convinces Figueiredo to take him cross-country on a motorbike to look up an old friend. Cochofel and the mechanic’s alarmed niece (Maysa Marta) follow in pursuit. The old man dies peacefully on the road, but Figueiredo, having wholeheartedly grasped his deliverance mission, keeps going.

A blind beggar is robbed of his chest of money. The theft leads to a dramatic situation in the street where he begs every day.

Jim is a small child who lives in an inn run by his parents. The arrival of a strange captain to the Island they live will trouble his existence and tip him into an universe of adventures.

Lisbon, on a winter day in 1994, between six and fourteen o'clock. A forty-year-old woman despairs in the last eight hours preceding the birth of her first child.

Lisbon Story is Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.

Martine is 25. Since breaking up with François, she has the feeling that the world is caving in on her. Between small jobs and one-night stands, she can't seem to get a fix on herself. In desperation, after a last quarrel with François, she unintentionally causes an accident that leads her to the emergency ward of a psychiatric hospital. During her brief stay, she unexpectedly sparks into life. She takes an interest in two young patients, Pierre and Anne, convinced that she is doing the right thing in supervising their love life...

Madrid in the 40s: in an old neighborhood tavern, every first Friday of the month at nightfall Moor Hauma organizes a unique and secret card game. The Caudillo, Francisco Franco, meets with several friends of Africa's campaign for a game.

In the quietness of rural life, small disputes about the right to use a rivulet may take the proportion of a life-and-death matter..

Vincent, a young Swiss, is upset by his meeting with the city of Lisbon. He will meet two persons: a prostitute of high flight and a great writer fallen and suicidal.

Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. Young marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, a father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the Valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. With time she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a lover.

Eloi, a paunchy middle-aged man, finds Samuel, a young sad sack, about to kill himself by plunging into the sea. Eloi takes Samuel under his wing, giving him a hot meal and bringing him to a seedy night club to introduce him to Esperanca, who is said to be the most beautiful sex worker in Lisbon—and is also Eloi’s daughter.

Portrait of the last days of the life of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.

This Portuguese movie directed by João Botelho, is part of The Four Elements series. This is the second episode, The Air.

Redheaded twins Armando and Beatriz always dreamed of being firefighters but during a rainy, uneventful winter they find themselves spending less time putting out infernos than they do helping neighbors who’ve locked themselves out of their apartments. This is how Armando meets a pretty young woman with whom he begins a tentative courtship. But soon a rift grows between the siblings and, spurred by Armando’s exaggerated stories about his nascent relationship, Beatriz begins experiencing aural hallucinations that can only be remedied through music and, finally, the love of a stranger. Pinto made this impassioned fairy tale as part of a series of films about the four elements. - FilmLinc

Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.

Having just split up with their respective partners, Maria and Daniel meet in a shop where they argue over a bed. From then on, they keep running into each other in all sorts of strange places and in all sorts of circumstances. They are mutually attracted and begin to intrepret the coincidences of their meeting as sign of fate, but they are hesitant to take the plunge. This little game of love and fate becomes even more complicated when Pierre, a French teacher, and Alicia, Maria's friend, become involved..Who will seduce whom?...Who will be seduced by whom?...After a series of misunderstandings, love settles the question.

On a whim, the long-married Hélène decides to look up a former lover of hers. At his apartment, she is met by the man's grown son, Julien, who tells her that his father died just a few days before. Before long, she has become Julien's lover, but she is also increasingly becoming attached to the rather unlikely idea that Julien and she are genetically related. Meanwhile, her cardiologist husband cannot fathom her increasingly bizarre behavior. It is one thing to have an affair, even with a much younger man, but she seems to be edging ever-closer to the borderline between sanity and madness.

Paul has left his wife and children. Now his wife and ex-mistress is on the hunt for him.

In a mental institution the patients see themselves as people like Jesus, Lázaro, Marta, Maria, Adão, Eve, Sonia, Raskolnikov, Aliosha e Ivan Karamasov, a Philosopher, a Profet, Santa Teresa d'Avila, reciting the Divine Comedy.

Until The End of the World is an odyssey for the modern age. As with Homer's Odyssey, the purpose of the journey is to restore sight -- a spiritual reconciliation between an obsessed father and a deserted son. Dr. Farber, in trying to find a cure for his wife's blindness, has created a device that allows the user to send images directly to the brain, enabling the blind to see.

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.

An ambitious black comedy that tells three loosely related stories: a couple of elderly landowners, laid low by economic conditions and reformist politics, are trying to gather enough money to build themselves a marble tomb that would keep their remains in the style to which they still aspire; they give their now blind former housekeeper a pig that proves to be more trouble than it's worth as the effort to fatten it up destroys what little family the woman has; and one of the couple's tenants, who is presenter of a relentlessly optimistic radio self-help show, tries to put his own counsel into effect when he saves a young woman from suicide.

The world after the atomic age. An engineer disappears, together with his consortium (Kryo'Corp) and his discovery: a new energy source powered by the fusion of two primary substances. Ulysses, Kryo'Corp's heir, organises an expedition to the only place these substances occur.

Episodes from entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a professorish soldier recounts them while marching through a Portuguese African colony in 1973.

At the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro. Portugal's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.

Danuta Zarasik plays Isabelle Eberhardt in this biographical drama. At the turn of the 20th century, Isabelle fell in love with the African desert, donning men's clothing to travel and record her adventures in writing while her Moslem husband patiently waited at home. This visually stunning feature shows the overwhelming majesty and beauty of the forces of nature. Director Christine Laurent relies upon her expertise as a painter and designer to bring an added dimension of artistic beauty to the film.

It’s the story of a love quadrangle, a child, a theater troupe, and a long winter. Nathalie is pregnant, but the baby’s father, Stefane, leaves her for Sabine, a set designer for the theater. Sabine has just left Bruno, an actor in the same troupe. Nathalie tries to kill herself and is saved by her friend Leni, as Stefane then follows Sabine on her theatrical tour...

The journey of an intellectual Creole. Before returning from Lisbon to Luanda, he stops in the Cape Verde islands in search of his ethnic and cultural roots.

Julie is a young woman from Rose Hill who arrives in rural Switzerland to marry her older pen-friend Marcel. She feels unhappy until she meets Jean, a younger man. However, his father disagrees.

This odd film is a major representative of an even odder film genre: direct-to-celluloid opera. It was commissioned by the Portuguese master of style, director Manoel de Oliveira from composer João Paes. Musically, it ranges from 19th-century romanticism to popular, modernist and even "post-modernist" styles. In the initially tame story, a host-narrator tells the story of a wedding between the two lovebirds: Viscount d'Aveleda and the beautiful Marguerite. However, what happens in the bridal chamber is incredibly bizarre. The events after that are even stranger (the film out-does even Luis Buñuel in that department), and the wedding guests and family indulge in cannibalism, among other perversions.

An angry young man goes to Europe to find his father, a '60s radical turned doctor in exile.

A young woman, working as sales-girl at a shopping center's music shop, wants someone with whom to share her secrets. A distant mother separating from her father, an aunt who emigrated to France, and her pre-adolescent sister, can't do - neither the boyfriend. Such a confident arrives unexpectedly - but then there are three of them, one too much. One leaves, but then another young man arrives, and there are three again. One must go. A sad young adult love story, told in the first person, singular - and ultimately alone, under the rain.

This symbolic drama from director Benoit Jacques underscores the characters' human need for affection. Children steal lemons for the thrill, while women steal other women's men from them just to prove they can. Drug smuggling, clandestine love affairs, and two lovers involved with the production of Shakespeare's Othello carry on with their own off-stage tragedy.

Summer of 1964. The professor Carlos and the couple Dário and Alda spend time together in the beach during vacations. Away from the colonial war, everything seems lost in time.

The film relates the painful ending of a love story binding an over-30-year-old woman and a North African, and the beginning and end of a relationship she also has with an “established” journalist. The stories illustrate the absolute claim of a woman who can understand love only in terms of life and death, an attitude that generally makes love appear dramatic, but at least burning and flickering, like the flame that glows in her heart.

Marisa, a 38 years old woman, tells a stranges story to her daughter while they're walking through a level crossing in Madrid. An anthropologist, Jaime, is chased by a mysterious jeep. In the course of the chase, he takes shelter in a small motel. When he settles down, he keeps writing in his personal diary, reflecting his impressions about his work in it.

Imagine a slightly dilapidated three star hotel in the tenth arrondissement run by a very distinguished lady with moral fibre and panache, Mrs. Coppercage. Alongside tourists visiting Paris, Mrs. Coppercage rents three rooms to three women at a monthly rate. Each woman is marked by life, yet they go on as best they can, never closing their eyes to the world around them, or to the men who impatiently await them. Faubourg Saint Martin opens as a love story and ends like a song as shots ring out and punctuate the chorus.

A mentally unstable woman and her son move to a sprawling mansion in Portugal to grow roses.

Manoel de Oliveira plays his film in three stages: the first part - a play, the second can be roughly defined as a silent film (with the behind the scenes read excerpts from Beckett works), but in the end the director brilliantly performs the same material of the avant-garde exercise. Surprisingly, a joke, repeated three times, each time everything sounds fresh and develops into an almost verbatim adaptation of the biblical "Book of Job" - a spectacular point in a parable about how hard to empathize with other people's misery, when you have your own.

"Maine-Ocean" is the name of a train that rides from Paris to Saint-Nazaire (near the ocean). In that train, Dejanira, a Brazilian, has a brush with the two ticket inspectors. Mimi, another traveler and also a lawyer, helps her. The four of them will meet together later and live a few shifted adventures with a strange-speaking sailor (Mimi's client).

With an off-beat sense of humor to match its erratic central character, this original comedy-drama features Jean-Philippe Ecoffey as Yves, a young man who works as a cop at night. The catch is that Yves turns to petty crime during the day, partly to impress Aurore (Aurelle Doazan), a nurse he idolizes from afar. His criminal hobby seems hard to understand, since it's doubtful that they will really get him anywhere with Aurore; besides, she already has a boyfriend. Nevertheless, Yves starts out by robbing a post office and ends up trying to run over Aurore's boyfriend, an act which finally gets him into serious trouble.

During the century of the Spanish Gold, Doña Prouhèze, wife of a nobleman, deeply loves Don Rodrigo, who is forced to leave Spain and go to America. Meanwhile Prouhèze is sent to Africa to rule the city of Mogador. Ten years later Rodrigo leaves America and travels to Africa in search of Prouhèze to find out that she died and eventually meeting her daughter.

Director Jorge Silva Melo has developed a viable, though highly intellectual mystery story about the world of art and culture and murder in this somewhat theatrical presentation. When German artist Bernd Hoffmann (Michael König) arrives in Lisbon to oversee the installation of his paintings in a joint exhibition with another Berlin artist, Hanna Brauer (Charlotte Schwab), Hanna never shows up. Hoffmann is puzzled because he is certain he saw a video sequence with Hanna at the exhibition, and he begins to look for her. Another Lisbon cultural center, a theater, is also having problems that may or may not be related -- and the mystery deepens when Hanna is found dead, either by her own hand, or murdered.

A sickly young girl is given away by her father to a childless couple. Twenty years later, she marries her adopted father.

In a specialized, hermetic drama about love won and lost, not necessarily by the same individuals, novice director Christine Laurent has focused on the backstage melodramas of an opera company. The conductor for an upcoming performance of the Marriage of Figaro has his mind and heart on other matters -- an entrancing diva who keeps him enraptured with her presence and voice. In the meantime, he finds fault with his cast members who cannot, of course, measure up to the woman of his dreams. As singers encounter one problem or another, it is clear that something has to be done about the conductor. Director Laurent designed costumes for both theater and opera, giving her some insight into the venue.

This quickly-filmed avant-garde farce by prolific director Raul Ruiz features an insomniac (Michel Lonsdale) whose main preoccupation is surreptitiously watching private matters -- he is a voyeur. He and an equally disreputable acquaintance rape a woman alongside the Seine, a crime made all the worse because she is pregnant. The rest of this slow-paced film deals with the consequences of that action.

This standard romantic drama focuses on three different couples who happen to come together in a small hotel in Rome and play out their differences in that setting. The couples are made up of a Parisian woman and her Slavic boyfriend out to spend some quality time together; a Frenchman (Jean-Noel Picq) searching for his sexually awakened teenage mistress; and a woman out to reunite with her Italian lover (Michele Placido). These people manifest different approaches to a romantic partnership that are tested in their brief encounters in Rome.

Lives is the story of a middle-aged couple that dwells the night, the heroin and small tricks.

Swaying between pleasure and despair, Elric throws himself into his pathological passion for the casino. Meeting Suzie could have saved him, but the young woman also sinks into gambling hell. The couple then start getting involved in the fearsome world of professional cheaters...

A marine biologist, a dolphin trainer, a research scientist, and a local sheriff try to hunt down a large sea monster, a shark/octopus hybrid, that is devouring swimmers and fishermen off a south Florida coast.

A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.

An island retreat. A man, his face bandaged, plays cards nonchalantly. His ex-wife arrives. Conversations happen. (Mubi)

A Swiss sailor jumps ship in Lisbon, tired of the noisy engine room, the ship. He rents a room and does little. He writes letters to his lover, describing the whiteness of the city, the solitude and the silence. He sends his love and emptiness; she replies with love and confusion.

A sailor sees a student killing his teacher and decides to spin a few yarns for him. He tells the boy of his many adventures in exotic South American ports where he visited opium dens and stayed in cathouses. In such dark, dreamlike places, the sailor meets many strange, mystical characters.

Ana combines straight-on documentary technique with unexpected flights of dreamlike surrealism. The title character, played by Ana Maria Martins Guerra, is a young Portuguese girl who lives with her grandmother. Through their relationship, we are witness to the Cycle of Life: Grandmother takes care of granddaughter until granddaughter is obliged to do same for grandmother. The scenes between the two protagonists are counterpointed with impressionistic camera compositions based upon famous religious paintings. Ana was impressive enough to earn an American art-house release, a rarity for independently produced Portuguese films.

A bewitching combinatory adaptation of the Bluebeard tale and a 15th century Portuguese fable of a damsel who disguises herself as a knight errant.

A publisher seeks information on a writer who died long ago.

The film was to be a documentary, but evolved during production to a fictional film. It nevertheless adheres strictly to the poems and letters exchanged by two of the most outstanding names of the Modernist Movement, Fernando Pessoa (in Lisbon) and Mário de Sá-Carneiro (in Paris). Their endless conversation was dramatically and suddenly terminated.

Christian, an art critic, must write a study on the painter René Dimanche in order to understand why he did not produce anything for eight years. He asks his friend Ingrid to help him break through this mystery.

On location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger Corman's The Day the World Ended (1956) . The producer is nowhere to be found and director Munro attempts to find him in hopes of being able to finish the film.

The shady side of an Italian textile trade in northern Germany is the subject of this slow-paced but atmospheric drama featuring Alberto Sordi as Totonno, a low-level, petty criminal anxious to move up a somewhat crooked ladder. Rising to the rank of the "dons" -- Don Raffaele (Carmine Ippolito) or Don Gennaro (Pasquale Cenammo) -- is not an easy task, as Totonno is about to find out. In the meantime, Paula (Belinda Lee) provides a romantic distraction, and another would-be entrepreneur opts for the straight and narrow. This uneven feature offers some colorful performances but the sum is less convincing than its parts.

A small group of well-to-do vacationers go on a hiking trip into the woods. Foolishly unprepared to deal with Mother Nature and their situation, they wander around lost for days and weeks, becoming more and more fatigued, hungry, and desperate. A brief encounter with a pair of epicureans on a bridge fails to garner them any of the gluttons' feast due to a language barrier. Eventually their party begins to die, and the survivors ration their meat among them, attaching a religious-type ritual to its dispensation.

The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.

A man exiled in Paris makes various trips to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution. Each trip is represented by a woman.

Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from the letters, about the poetess’s Jewish past, while the film shows stark waves beating against the seashore. – BFI

Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from these letters, as the film shows a boat journey down the Seine, past familiar bridges and landmarks. – BFI

A story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives. Based on the novel of the same name by Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.

Reis and Cordeiro’s undisputable masterpiece exploded the meaning and possibilities of ethnographic cinema with its lyrical exploration of the still resonant myths and legends embodied in the people and landscapes of Portugal’s remote Trás-os-Montes region.

The rise and fall of a revolutionary cooperative movement established in a large private farm in Ribatejo, Portugal, from March to December 1975 (most part of the land occupations occurred in Alentejo, promoted by the communist party). In direct speech, sometimes to the camera, sometimes among themselves, the uneducated rural workers expose their misery, their suffering, their hopes, and ultimately their despair - when a socialist government orders the restitution of the land to their primitive owners, and these transform the land into a hunting reserve.

The story takes place near Lisbon, in the mid-16th century. Bela, an adopted young man, tries to find his place in a family that is free, but trapped in a world where each shadow allows imperfections to shine through.