All the action of The Mugger takes places in one morning. The man is about to execute a plan he has been preparing for a long time. The camera follows him around throughout all his actions. The audience becomes a privileged witness of this person’s most intimate moments of anxiety and desperation that precede what is about to be a life or death decision.
Dominicu is a vision of the post. Post-purchase, post-sale, post-bargaining… It’s the mirror of countless markets which traditionally inhabit many places all over Portugal and it’s inevitably a mirror of those who transit on them. A short documentary film which transfuses the common knowledge that one has of the Relógio Market in Chelas, and that ends up by showing the way in which many humans face their environment.
“Seat 26D” takes us through the graphical reenactment of a plane crash. Its strange calmness seems to echo in the separation of an old couple in “Off the Highway”, while “Seven times a day…” places our new beginnings and ending in the realm of dreams and nightmares. “The Pimp and His Trophies” is a recollection of a family brothel by a young child, while “Totally Lies” faces the conflict between male and female archetypes in social media and contemporary discourse. )
“She Comes Back on Thursday” is a personal and playful look on the director’s parents true separation and its fictional games, pursuing the work started in “About a Month” (presented in Indielisboa 2014’s International Competition”).)
He wanted to be the branch, swaying in the treetops, and the wind that made it sway. He wanted to be the deep forest and the blue ocean. He wanted to be the waves, washing in upon the beaches, and the sand being washed to and fro.
In 1973 Roberto Saldivar was arrested and imprisoned in an old saltpeter mine in northern Chile. The mine was used as concentration camp for political prisoners. 20 years later he returned to confront his memories. He has now lived there since. Alone.
Nicolas, a fourteen year-old foster child, lives with an elderly couple. One day he robs them and runs away with a book and a postcard. The book, he will read with a girl he has just met. The postcard, will go to the sea with the girl.
On holiday in his summer house, Jorge, a still young but well to do lawyer who suffers from diabetes, tells Filipa, his wife and formerly his nurse, that he wants to divorce her. Next day, three persons arrive: Tiago, an old friend and now a writer, who is actually having an affair with Filipa; Sara, Tiago’s sister; and Francisca, who is actually having an affair with Jorge. That few days are not exactly harmonious and happy.
“The Invention of Night” brings us the dark universe of a haunted forest and the animals desires of a rambling youth.)
Between dreams and death, Olga and Marilu await a dinner guest.
“The Mesh and the Circle” creates its own sensorial land by editing together an empirical study on manual labor.)
“The Pimp and His Trophies” is a recollection of a family brothel by a young child.)
“The Noisemaker” shows us a professor fighting against reality — a school without students.)
Ana and Paul visit a home improvement store. While Paul is busy over his mobile phone, Ana befriends Robert, a shop assistant. The three of them wander through the store aisles, trying to get everything for a happy home.
“The Satanic Thicket – One” builds on the despair that lurks behind the silence of a family hiding away in a deep forest.)
Urban chaos is a defining trait of Portuguese cities. Is the city, as we know it today, an endangered model? As an answer to the challenge of thinking through filming, I made this film: a guided tour of three totally different houses. This short film doesn’t give answers, but it reveals illusions that grow upon wreckage.
In a possible futuristic scenario of mayhem and chaos, when sweet water is the most rare and valuable asset, a scientist builds human-looking androids with the purpose of telling the survivors, one hundred-years after a nuclear holocaust, the tale of the human race.
He’s even able to foresee the fall and of feeling in his skin the profound ruts dug out in the ground. In the same way he can know when a nurse is looking at him even with his eyes closed. He knows that by following that track and once down there, he would only find iron and flesh melted into one. He knows that if he can’t spread his arm into the abyss and ransom his mother from there, he can only immerse himself in that underground he has privileged access to because he doesn’t know anything else. Lonely yet unwillingly communicant ‚ the zone greets, the zone liberates.