A smart cookie, a dreamer, a simple man and a lazy one live together during the pre-civilization period. With an accurate vision of cinema, the director uses pessimism and sense of humour to show us that man always stays like himself, no matter how many changes he makes in the world. And it ends in style. (Miguel Valverde)
A film belonging to the pagan and popular realm. A documentary with several layers of a praedial Portugal, about a man named Antero. Antero is wicked. Antero recites rhymes, verses and popular sayings. Antero laughs. Antero collects lost objects and fixes everything he finds. Like Joseph Beuys said, every man is an artist. (Carlos Ramos)
In his first solo work, the director reflects the images of the fire in Chiado in his character, wandering sadly while talking on the phone. Fire consumes the buildings and a love rupture consolidates. A game of projections creates a super-real atmosphere, rebuilding a beautiful part of Portuguese cinema. (Miguel Valverde)
One must look into the tired eyes of those who hope one day to be able to communicate. Mother and daughter don’t know how. Maybe the dog can help, but maybe he can’t either. André Santos and Marco Leão are new voices in the national panorama and seek to assert their cinematography through narrative, not forgetting a formal side and a very accurate aesthetic. (M. V.)
In the late summer of 1980, Alda and her sister Maria, at the age of 16 and 17, arrive in Lisbon to escape the civil war in Angola. Left to themselves, they must learn to survive in a foreign city. Alda and Maria, from scratch will build a new life and become women. When problems nearly become unbearable dreadful news fall upon them. Paradoxically, it’s those terrifying news that gives them the strength to decide their own fates. (Pocas Pascoal)
O Fim do Mundo was made as an experiment of inserting a fictional skeleton in a given reality, to be filled with documental flesh – a group of young people in a social neighbourhood of Setúbal, an industrial city in the south of Lisbon. (Pedro Pinho)
Within the rural country, a man tries to understand the strange phenomenon that is happening in his body. The old grandmother, the bird in the cage and the almost inhospitable landscape cover him like a fog that allows him no certainties. A fiction about the stories that are created when reality is too harsh to be addressed. (P. C.)
Gingers. Redheads. Fire crotches… Recessive gene. They have alluring traits, the ones that get them bullied or draws us to them. Because they’re different they have had to put up with a lot. This has made them strong, stronger than you might expect for men who are doubly in a minority (gay and gingers). This film collects samples of their testimonials and their DNA (skin, hair and sperm). (Antonio da Silva)
An unusual Portuguese adaptation of the famous Bluebeard tale. An excellent stop motion animation with special attention to shots and wardrobe. The horror story of a woman who marries the famous Bluebeard and is tempted to enter the only room that is forbidden. Forbidden fruit is always the sweetest. (C. R.)
The duo Reis/Miller knows very well how to detect a universe to work on. Their films transport us to pronounced social realities and focus on the accurate stressing of what is most important. In this film-experiment, where they themselves are pushed to the process, we see a group of Brazilian women talk about large andminor issues. (M. V.)
Within Walls describes us the details of the daily routines of a couple. The gestures and actions of the two, a silent dance mechanized by habit, are witnessed by the house that welcomes them and also gives them life, light, space, and the time which records them. (R. F.)
Before the assault, feel the weight of the body. (Sandro Aguilar)
The powerful animal breathes and bellows in the shadows. Outside, everyone waits for him: they talk, scream, eat, drink. The show will begin. (M. C.)
The five Japanese elements are, in order of importance – Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Void. People and animals are side by side on a very old game. There is a day and night. All exists simultaeneously. A journey through the Portuguese border. (André Príncipe)
A film that has as main actor a complex of tidal pools designed by Siza Vieira, in Leça da Palmeira. More than a record of a work of architecture, this is a film that explores the concepts of space and sound. A film about a place and its entrails, built with the solidity of rigorous plans. (C. R.)