Animatógrafo II

Adaptation of a 1987 novel by Agustina Bessa Luis, a multi-generation exploration of a wealthy family with a mysterious past and a house on the island of Madeira.

The young and promising genetics researcher Thomas Nielsen will stop at nothing to become the first person to identify the elements in man that trigger aggression. To achieve faster results he performs illegal tests on the convicted mass murderer Iparrah. But when Thomas one day gets caught, he injects the unauthorized test agent itself. This turns out to have unexpected effects ...

Summer of 1870. Two writers, Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão, decide to write a four-handed whodunit for the daily "Diário de Notícias". Could it be that the story they wrote as fiction is based on a real case? This question fuels the conflict between the two writers and drives them to a nearly fatal duel. Lisbon is in commotion. One crime follows another in a story in which love is stronger than tradition. Everything happens at frenzied pace, as in a game.

A group of children, fleeing the war, is taken to Luanda accompanied by a nun. When they reach the aeroplane, 12-year-old N'Dala decides to leave the group and to reconnoitre the city. The nun then starts her unceasing quest for the missing boy. N'Dala, only carrying a textile bag and a doll made of wire, walks through the busy streets filled with people and traffic. Later he finds the tranquility of the island off the coast, where he meets the old fisherman Antonio, with whom he becomes friends. Not much later, he meets the lively, whimsical Zé, who is a little older than he is. N'Dala starts to experience the city and its inhabitants as increasingly forbidding and he would most like to return to the countryside from whence he came. Then he meets Joka, a fringe figure who persuades him to help with a robbery in exchange for money. With this film, Maria Joao Ganga wanted to provide a realistic sketch of the bitter political situation in Angola. One of her most important motivations ...

In the midst of Mozambique's devastating civil war, Muidinga, an orphaned refugee, wanders the countryside in search of his mother. His only companion is an elderly storyteller, and the only guide to finding his mother is a dead man's diary. This transporting drama underscores the power of imagination in surviving, and ultimately overcoming, the catastrophe of war.

Maria, an executive from Oporto, lives in the search of the right man for her. On the other hand, her two friends, Joana, a doctor that has fallen in love to a co-worker, and Isilda, a hairdresser with an open hart and an adventurous spirit, seem to be happy with their lives. One day though, everything changes. Maria is forced to take care of her father, victim of a brain accident. During these days of turbulence, Maria thinks she has found the perfect man, a mysterious Star, an habitué of chat channels on the Internet. The three friends find out that cense of humour can be the key for a happy life. Internet, romance, a bachelor party; marriage, dates and some adventures are Loving Maria. A film where love shows himself with the most different looks. Love arrives when you don't expect it and goes away when you think it is safe. It can even appear in the light of a mobile computer.

When a football agent acquires the rights of two young Mozambican players, he tries to transfer them to Benfica, his favorite club.

In 1983, little João Amaral Severo asks his father to go to the circus. His father, and army captain who had been recently widowed, refuses to take him under the pretext that the circus would draw his attention away from his studies. Ten years later João is a student in the Military College, and is tired of the harsh discipline imposed by his father and decides to join a travelling circus that stops in his hometown, Alcochete. From then on João, alone and free to live his life the way he wants, finds a world of magic, the love of Dolores (a young trapeze artist) and the family he never really had. Until a twist of fate turns João into a father...