Terratreme

Mariana, an upper-class Chilean, feels a strange attraction towards her riding teacher, Juan, a former colonel with a shady past.

On his deathbed, his royal highness Alfredo, King without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories and the time he dreamt of becoming a fireman. The encounter with instructor Afonso from the fire brigade, opens a new chapter in the life of the two young men devoted to love and desire, and the will to change the status quo.

Ana was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ruled by religion and traditions. Growing up as the middle child of a family of three with her mother and grandmother. Early Ana realized that girls and boys were given different tasks. Through her friendship with Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, Ana questions the world that is promised to her. When her friend Cloé arrives from Canada, bringing with her the glowing days of youth, Ana embarks on a journey that will take her beyond the horizon.

One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organize to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.

In order to reflect upon current practices of political dissent, we delve into the past and follow the experiences of a young artist. Invited to go underground in Portugal, during the second half of the 20th century, Margarida Tengarrinha played an important role in anti-fascist resistance, becoming a forger out of political activism. Given the anachronism, Clandestina is like a letter to a time yet to come, a premonition of the tragic possibility of History repeating itself.

When her mother dies, 40-year-old Helena now has time for herself after years of taking care of her family. She works at a film production company, dances boisterously, gets drunk. A quiet film about letting go morphs into a coming of middle age story.

The Forensic Psychiatric Hospital is a medium-security level, closed structure, with a rehabilitation component. The service provided includes psychiatric, psychological, medical, therapeutic and social care. The 32 men who inhabit the unit were considered exempt from punishment by the court. They feel time going by. Slowly. The film settles in this individual time.

This film tries to make a silent record of the arrival of an economy of scale, its flows, and its effects upon the transformation of an island’s physical and human landscape.

A dive, the midday sunlight filtering down through the water. The air in her lungs has to last until she can dislodge the abalone. Dives like these have been carried out in Japan for over 2000 years by the Ama-San.

In Alhambra, between the mountains and the river, a train runs through the village. Oscar, forty-eight years, has worked for the last twenty-fifth years in the same factory, and finds himself awaiting for the resolution of the court on the application of the insolvency of the factory where he worked. With the suspended production and the unpaid wages, Oscar and his colleagues continue to appear daily to work hoping that they can keep their jobs.

Estado de Excepção is a documentary about CITAC (Coimbra Theater Initiation Circle), a university theater group, revealing history since it was constituted in 1956 until the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. It is the history of the theater group university and, through it, the history of theater in Portugal, revealing two remarkable decades of the History of Portugal. Through the Academy of Coimbra, the documentary reproduces student life, the position of women in society, and the change in mentalities of being and being in the world. It reproduces the existing censorship and the fight against the dictatorship, the resistance to an exhausted regime, as well as the emerging contradictions of the democratic revolution. CITAC has a heritage of 50 years of experience in Coimbra. It carries with it the possibility of the theatrical and civic formation of thinking bodies, constituting a proper ball of a possible model, generation by generation, between studies, theater, and social drama.

Three Portuguese queer short films brought together in a program that charts an alternative path through converging universes, forming a new constellation of desires, fears, and struggles. Entre a Luz e o Nada by Joana de Sousa, Sob Influência by Ricardo Branco, and Uma Rapariga Imaterial by André Godinho are three cinematic gestures that explore techniques and narratives from science fiction to horror, seeking new ways to view and imagine other possibilities. After traveling through various festivals, these films can now be experienced together, in a mutual exploration of mysterious worlds, unsettling dreams, and singular visions.

Two young Portuguese women try to put down roots in Brazil. Teresa is newly arrived; Francisca has been there a while. This sure-footed, loving portrait of two counterparts, attracting and repelling, is also an ode to Belo Horizonte: a city with no tourist attractions, but bags of atmosphere and lust for life.

Miguel —alias Tibars, alias “Djon África,” born and raised in Portugal— is a kindhearted Rastafarian who loves women and lives a carefree life. Until one day a stranger tells him he's the spitting image of his father, “a player and a crook.” His father, whom he never even knew! This intriguing discovery makes him change tack. Particularly when his grandmother, who always took care of him, finally tells him how his father was in prison; how sad Miguel was as a toddler when he couldn't see him; how his father was banished to Cape Verde. Miguel goes there to visit him. Who is this man?

Lithuania, 1948. War is over, but the country is left in ruins. 19-year-old Untė is a member of the Partisan movement resisting Soviet occupation. They do not fight on equal terms, but this desperate struggle will determine the future of the whole population. At the age of discovery of life, Untė discovers violence and treachery. The lines are blurred between the burning passion of his youth and the cause for which he is fighting. He will invest himself wholeheartedly, even if it means losing his innocence…

Salome gets a summer job in a junkyard somewhere in the country side. Under a western sun, in this place out of the world, her teenage rebellion springs up. From unexpected encounters to shared sorrows, arise promises of a new life.

In 1927, Luís Wittnich Carrisso, professor at the Coimbra University, travels to Angola to study the local flora. Second episode of a series of 4 documentaries on the Botanical history of Portugal.

A portrait of the daily lives of young people living in a new-built estate on the outskirts of Lisbon. School is a joke and there’s no work to be had anyway, so the girls try to have fun as best they can. New-girl Eva is very pretty but quiet. The others aren’t sure at first whether she’s arrogant or just shy. Iara and Eva head off to the beach with two boys. The lads turn a couple of abandoned shopping trolleys into racing chariots for them and the atmosphere begins to tingle. Later, they argue with the rest of the group. The other girls manage to get into a club that night but the boys don’t and must kick their heels outside. They’re bent on revenge. They meet up with Eva and go back to her place.

The National Ballet of Portugal is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Since its foundation, it has aimed to present the great classics, as well as to always welcome contemporary creations. Day-to-day life is demanding for dancers, choreographers, musicians, répétiteurs, seamstresses, light technicians, sound technicians, and other elements of a large staff that make it possible for dance to travel through the rehearsal rooms and linger in the hallways before making it onto the stage. This film follows not only the company’s creations and premieres, but mainly each dancer’s silent and structural work.

At 63 years old and almost retired, Joaquim is forced to follow job centre rules so he can collect unemployment benefits. Despite knowing that he will never return to active life, he must go from company to company asking for stamps to attest that he is looking for work. In these trips he reminisces about his life as an immigrant to the U.S., where he worked as a cab driver in New York and witnessed numerous Wall Street crashes.