Isabel de Castro

Johnny, aged 20, can't live without Fanfan, his twin sister. There is a very particular intimacy between them. They walk together everywhere, share the same room, the same tastes, the same bike, the same camping tent. But also a conflict principle sets in. Oppressed by his overbearing need, she decides to head for the south of Portugal, the country of their parents. His dreams are shattered; he feels deeply betrayed by his sister. Caught between his father who is preparing to retire to Portugal and his mother who refuses to leave France, he tries to work out his own identity. His passion for rock music gets him involved with his sister's former lover. By following this charismatic leader preaching dubious ideology, he risks losing his "gentle half" forever. Meanwhile in Portugal, she becomes disillusioned. Will they manage to grow up without each other?

Open details →

Based on a the short story "Low Flying Aircraft" by J.G. Ballard and set in a near future where humans are dying breed. Judite and André flee to a semi-abandoned apartment complex to protect their mutant child from certain death.

Open details →

"At first everything was relatively simple. I was looking for a boy of African origins, between 16 and 18 years old to incarnate the role of Alberto in the film I had just written. As they were not actors, I asked candidates to tell me a story of their choice. What they gave me was a lot of life, and they did it with such generosity and authenticity that I was the one concerned. Would I be able to find the same strength, the same emotion?" - Inês de Medeiros

Open details →

Open details →

Open details →

Open details →

The relationship between António and Ruth ends unexpectedly when Ruth decides to live with Pedro, António's best friend. António doesn't fight back and lets himself drown. From the woods come Violeta and Gaspar, two strange beings, a mixture of fairies, demons and guardian angels, who help António overcome his depression. With the thunders the two characters return to their domains. And life goes on.

Open details →

Amo-te Teresa tells the forbidden love story of Teresa and Miguel, aged 35 and 15, respectively. Teresa is a doctor and, after a frustrated love life, she decides to abandon Lisbon and returns to her native land. Immediately, a strong attraction forms between Teresa and Miguel, a friend of her oldest son.

Open details →

Gloria is set against the backdrop of a rural landscape slowly disappearing in modern Portugal. The small border town of Vila de Santiago, once a booming trade center for illegal trafficking, is about to become a ghost town, as a new motorway is to bypass the city and the railway station is being closed. Its stationmaster, Vincente, is preparing to retire. Many young people have moved out, leaving the children to be brought up by the elderly, including thirteen-year-old Glória and her friend Ivan. Glória's life suddenly changes with the arrival of Vincente's younger brother, Mauro, who has just come out of prison and has some old issues to settle. Mauro begins to charge around the station on his motorbike, while Glória's friendship with Ivan is put to test on account of her attraction to older Mauro.

Open details →

Amanda is a melancholic prostitute, in love with a regular client, a disenchanted doctor. Since the day Amanda met this man, he has become, without knowing it, her only client. This explains why Amanda, since then, has been stealing suitcase in a bus station in order to live. One day Amanda steals a suitcase which is different than the other. Its content will change her life.

Open details →

Cape Verde, 1964. At the feet of a mighty volcano, the traditional Cape Verdean society is undergoing a steady change. The old land-owning aristocracy is disintegrating. A class of "mulattos" begins to emerge, with a trade-based financial power that threatens the landlords. A new identity arises, a mix of old and new, of African and Portuguese culture, sensual and dynamic. The songs of Cesária Évora follow this inevitable transformation. From the novel by Henrique Teixeira de Sousa.

Open details →

Open details →

Young Jesus is taken on a vacation by his parents (Rita Blanco, Adriano Luz) to a deserted beach resort. They accidentally fall into overnight wealth after Jesus digs in the sand, uncovering a large drug stash. Others characters intersecting here include an alcoholic actress, a philandering banker, a general trafficking in arms, priests who close their church and head north as hitchhikers, politicians who watch an all-girl production of Julius Caesar, and beggars who recite a children's story in a huge heap of trash.

Open details →

Open details →

Lúcia is an independent woman who lives alone in Lisbon. Her father commits suicide leaving her a message on phone recorder, revealing a letter he wrote. However Lúcia can't find it in her father's house. On that visit she ends up meeting with her mother, a known political activist with whom she has a distant and tense relationship. In hope of finding the letter, Lúcia leaves to the farm where she grew up, on an isolated location. There she reencounters Álvaro, an old childhood companion, who shares a little life time he has left between roses and the piano, and the guardian angel that follows and protects her through nocturnal wanderings.

Open details →

Confusion caused by Jerónimo, an old man abandoned in a hospital unit, staging his own death.

Open details →

An old woman is woken in the dead of night by a phone call. On the line, a stranger fights his insomnia by dialling random numbers.

Open details →

Open details →

Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.

Open details →

At the end of the seventeenth century, in Naples, still dominated by the Spaniards, a young pupil, Balthasar,is castrated to preserve the purity and beauty of his voice. The Duchess dies and her son, the Duke of Arcos, takes charge of the inheritance, which includes Balthasar. With the entrance of Maria Loffredo, former lover of the Duke, a triangle is established that unchains tragic consequences to the allegedly callous life of Balthasar.

Open details →

Open details →

Open details →

Open details →

Pierre, a middle-aged tourist guide, is the victim of a sudden failure : he does not recognize anything about him any longer. He goes back home and in his apartment he finds a mysterious young man who tells him he is here to avenge a young woman who has taken her own life. What share of responsibility does Pierre hold in this situation?

Open details →

The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.

Open details →

Open details →

Open details →

Lisbon, on a winter day in 1994, between six and fourteen o'clock. A forty-year-old woman despairs in the last eight hours preceding the birth of her first child.

Open details →

Jan thinks he is Swedish-Danish, but after his mother's death he discovers he was adopted. As his world begins to fall apart, he decides to find his birth parents. The hunt leads him to Portugal - in a taxi - where more surprises await him.

Open details →

Open details →

Ana, a former member of the Basque terrorist group ETA who lives in a small village near the Portuguese border working as a veterinarian and sharing her days with her partner Darío and their daughter Amalia, meets José, an attractive man who participated in the dirty anti-terrorist war against ETA criminals who took refuge in France.

Open details →

Miguel (Luis Miguel Cintra) is lucky that his income will only level off if he neglects his business as a financier, and his wife and family will be well supported. Why? Because he has begun hearing noises that no one else hears, noises that bother him a great deal, and that make it impossible for him to bear human society. His wife (Jessica Weiss) is thoroughly put out by this radically changed behavior in her formerly good husband, but though she considers leaving him, she stays by his side. Deep in the mountains, Cecelia (Rita Dias), a devout, pure young cowherd, has been brutally raped by an old man. Her boyfriend (Pedro Hestnes) has killed the rapist, and fled the area. As a result of the rape, Cecelia is pregnant. One day, while driving in the mountains, Miguel gives Cecelia's boyfriend a ride. The two of them chance upon her sitting amid the rocks with her infant baby.

Open details →