In a remote South American colony in the late 18th century, officer Zama of the Spanish crown waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. He suffers small humiliations and petty politicking as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia.
Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.
About three generations of a family grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in the historic town of Sintra, Portugal.
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.
Everybody has always loved Jeanne. These days, she hates herself. Up to her ears in debt, she has to go to Lisbon and sell her mother’s apartment, who passed away one year ago. At the airport, she runs into Jean, a whimsical and somewhat intrusive former high school classmate.
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.
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 !
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.
Patrick, 20-years-old, lives in Paris with his older boyfriend. He runs a teenage pornography website, which results in a prison sentence following a raid at a party. Mário, 8-years-old, was kidnapped 12 years ago in Portugal. Patrick and Mário are the same person with two conflicting identities: a life in Paris filled with parties, drugs, and promiscuity and a new rural life in Portugal, where he feels obliged to reconnect with a broken family.
On a remote volcanic island that everybody wants to leave, little Nana learns to stay. Her mother, Nia, went into exile right after she was born and Nana grows up in the family of her father. One day, the family learns that Nia is ill. Nana begins to develop high fevers and is sent to the foot of a volcano for treatment. There she encounters a world steeped in magical realism, between dreams and reality. Later, when Nana is a teenager, her mother Nia finally returns to the island.
Crista, Carloto and João are building an airy greenhouse for butterflies in the garden. The three of them share household routines, day after day… And they are not the only ones.
Bruno Aleixo was invited to write a biopic about his own life. Lacking ideas, he decided to ask his closest friends for inspiration. Reunited in a cafe, each of his friends suggests a different idea, more or less biographical.
In the heart of Portugal, amid the mountains, the month of August is abuzz with people and activity...
The end of the Cold War did not bring about a definitive thaw in the former republics of the Soviet Union, so that today there are several frozen conflicts, unresolved for decades, in that vast territory. As in Transnistria, an unrecognized state, seceded from Moldova since 1990. Kolja is a silent witness of how borders and bureaucracy shape the lives of citizens, finally forced to lose their identity.
The story of Brazil’s first emperor, returning to Europe on board the English ship Warspite. The trip makes Pedro conquer his fears and face his life from a personal point of view. He goes back in time and relives outstanding moments of his earlier life – since his childhood, when in 1808 he arrived coming from Portugal with his family, until he left in the dead of the night, in 1831, running away from Brazil.
Exactly what it's announced: the screen of the famous console video game and a dance with no music, to the fragile rhythm of replays.
Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them.Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.
Us to the fascinating, disturbing, ghostly figure of Paulo de Figueiredo, professional mercenary soldier, from the sixties, played the hired liquidator task in diverse corners of the world.
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.
On January 21, 1975, in a village in the north of Portugal, a child writes to his parents who are in Angola to tell them how sad Portugal is. On July 13, 2011, in Milan, an old man remembers his first love. On May 6, 2012, in Paris, a man tells his baby daughter that he will never be a real father. During a wedding ceremony on September 3, 1977 in Leipzig, the bride battles against a Wagner opera that she can’t get out of her head. But where and when have these four poor devils begun searching for redemption?
