ESMAD

A woman wakes up next to her caring husband, when, out of the sudden, she just knows she needs to run.

A son of a butcher, who is miserable working in his family’s business, avoids touching meat at all costs just because he doesn’t have the guts to tell his father he wants to be vegan.

Mariana died today. Or yesterday, maybe. While sitting at the Cafe, David spends his last night on Earth reflecting about himself, his time, and his human condition.

Vicente is an “abafador”, a smotherer who travels around with the mission of ending the suffering of those who are terminally ill and dying. Tired of living like a criminal, he does one last service but is caught red-handed by a woman.

A detective questions the similarities between the crime he investigates and his own actions after waking up to a dead woman, with no memory of the night before.

“Behind time, time comes” interlaced with folk songs, narrates the rhythms of rural life, where time and its weight, shape and define the landscape, as well as the lives that compose it. Accompanying the reminiscences of a group of women from the parish of Dornelas, Sever do Vouga, Portugal.

In a dystopian future, a slender operative is faced with the unexpected birth of twins, having only one hour to find two volunteers who can sacrifice themselves so that their children can live.

This time, in “Atlantida”, Puertas wanders through stories based on memories he keeps from his hometown, Póvoa de Varzim, wondering what happened to the aura of this city he remembers so nostalgically.

Three classmates stuck at home because of a pandemic decide to write a visual letter to the quarantine as if it was a character itself, in this letter they expose their reflections upon all the feelings that these hard times evoke; the fear of change, the nostalgia, the real meaning of "saudade" and the curiosity of what is coming next.

Rita’s life took another path, quite different from her older siblings’ and the children her mother teacher at the primary school. Rita learns outside instituted rules or of what is often socially accepted. The daily life of a home schooling community, where one studies in unconventional fashion.

“Paisagem Submersa” revisits the submerged places in the waters of the Vouga River, which, according to popular belief, “always goes after what it is entitled to”. From the memories and voices of Cidália, the Marias Madalenas, as well as of Manuel and José, the stories of the past of two neighboring places, ever further apart, come to life.