Rita Durão

PLAYBACK is not just a biopic about Carlos Paião. It's a journey into the creative universe of one of the greatest geniuses of Portuguese music. Carlos studies Medicine, lives among books, exams, and expectations, but it is in the secret of melodies, words, and imagination that he finds the place where he truly breathes. In a country still discovering new sounds, he risks exchanging the security of a white coat for the uncertainty of stages, songs, and a dream bigger than himself. Between duty and desire, reason and intuition, fear and courage, Carlos builds a unique path, made of talent, humor, creative obsession, and an almost luminous urgency to leave his mark. PLAYBACK reveals not only the songs that made Carlos Paião an unforgettable figure in Portuguese music, but also the intimate universe from which they were born.

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The misfortunes of Sofia, the exemplary Madalena and Camila, the troubled vacations of girls and boys, a few years later leading to the resolution of some mysteries, form the perfect trilogy by the Countess of Ségur on education, social, religious, and political power. Desire and its oppression, violence and punishment, in short, the terrible loss combined with inevitable growth. Both adults and children will understand that precepts, rules, and prayers can tear nerves and blood apart.

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One day they meet randomly on the street: João is unemployed, Clara works in the film industry as a production assistant. They were colleagues at film school. She invites him to participate in this film she’s working on. “Eternal Flame” it’s a melancholic comedy about the dynamics of a film crew and the growing pains of a young slacker. A homage to the family of Portuguese cinema and cinema itself

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In a time preceding the Carnation Revolution, we meet two men: one young, one old. One is fleeing the country, and the other helps him escape through Trás-os-Montes. While they make “the leap,” they speak about their lives and their troubles… This is an ode to those who fought for Freedom, and to these fifty springs that have passed. Throughout 13 performed songs, we travel across the country, hand in hand with several Portuguese people who tells us their stories through music, until we get back to this young man who runs away and returns to Lisbon, shortly after the Revolution, to reunite with his loved ones and live in freedom.

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A child prodigy, a talented pianist, who fears the gift he was born with. A father persecuted and tormented by the infernal memory of the colonial war and a luminous mother afflicted by an incurable disease. A grandfather and grandmother in exile on a small village and an anti-Salazarist, an unrepentant traveller who settles in Buenos Aires. A music teacher who teaches his students that being a musician is not a fate of guaranteed happiness and that there is a lot of pain in the human heart. The story of a Portuguese family that lived through dictatorship, colonial war and democratic revolution - the improbable and surprising threads with which individual destinies weave the collective destiny.

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Victor is a poor and submissive man who serves his general and the palace of an aristocratic family. Haunted by the red lips of his beloved Maria, he suffers unbearable hallucinations that lead him to the great precipice of death. “Illicit Trade” explores 3 texts by Georg Büchner - "Woyzeck", "Leonce and Lena" and “The Hessian Courier". A film adaptation of the German author's literary universe that is as anachronistic as imminently actual.

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Shaken by sadness, lack of motivation and apathy, Rita discovers an application on her cell phone that offers her the opportunity to live other people's lives. Feeling the need to make a radical change in her life, she decides to install the mysterious application called “Appy” and dive into the different experiences it offers. However, what Rita does not understand is that the errors in the application, still in the experimental phase, will trigger irreparable consequences in her life.

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The young film student Maria do Mar is working on a documentary about the old manor houses along the Douro River. It is the final project in her thesis on “Reality in Cinema”. Maria has an unlimited confidence in what is visible. Her candour and her naivety allow her to see the bright side of life – such as the beauty of the landscape and the authenticity of the place, or what’s left of it. But when Maria enters the final manor house on her list, she soon realises that something is going on in this house that is not as innocent as it first seemed. The manor is truly a house of horrors.

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Anna and Helena, both mothers, struggle with two forced separations. Anna, a Ukrainian refugee, tries to survive in Lisbon with her daughter Kamilla. Helena, Portuguese, survives the death of her son. The two women become friends the day they meet at the Food Bank.

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Paul and Adèle were once lovers and separated but are still good friends, one year after everything seems to take them away from each other. The key of E-flat may be the key of true friendship, but it is Mozart that pushes them apart...

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Three generations of a family living together in an idyllic villa juggle the demands of their wedding planning business and their own personal crises.

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North of Italy, the von Kettens dispute the forces of the Episcopate of Trent. Herr Ketten seeks marriage in a distant country, Portugal. After their honeymoon journey back home, Ketten leaves again for the war. Eleven years elapsed… Rumours are running about the presence of that 'foreigner' in the castle. Some say she's a heretic. Until one day, the Bishop of Trento ends up dying and, with the signature of peace, falls the background of von Ketten's life. Will the Portuguese win, where death seems to be moving in?

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Explore hidden desires on a sleepover, fall in love with the handyman and be seduced by a stranger on the beach as you discover why Love Is the Drug. Boys On Film 17 includes nine complete films: Nicholas Colia's "Alex And The Handyman" starring Keaton Nigel Cooke, Aaron Profumo, and Hogan Gorman; Dawid Ullgren's "Mr. Sugar Daddy" starring Bengt C.W. Carlsson and Aleksandar Gajic; Brendon McDonall's "Spoilers" starring James Peake and Tom Mumford; André D. Chambers's "Tellin' Dad" starring Carl Loughlin, Ricky Tomlinson, and Michael Byron; Eyal Resh's "Boys" starring Wyatt Griswold and Pearce Joza; Martin Edralin's "Hole" starring Ken Harrower and Sebastian Deery; Lorelei Pepi's animated "Happy & Gay"; André Santos and Marco Leão's "Pedro" starring Filipe Abreu and Rita Durão; and Anthony Schatteman's "Kiss Me Softly" starring Ezra Fieremans, Marijke Pinoy, and Marc Van Eeghem.

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Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.

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Pedro gets home at dawn. Before the young boy falls asleep, his lonely mother drags him to the beach.

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Jorge is a loner and a writer of popular books. At night, he looks through other people's windows and thinks that they are truly happy.

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Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.

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The short life of the Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini is colourfully portrayed, not as a conventional biopic, but as a visual poem which evokes the turbulent life and complex personality of the literary heroine as she develops her genius for writing.

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Teresa is a soap-opera actress. Meeting again an old passion brings her back apparently lost memories, leading her to question not only her love life but also her career options. In the studio, the daily work is spiced by the frenzy group of younger actors. After all, they all ask the same question: where does happiness lies?

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Showing reality like it is... What happens when a promising and smart young woman is suddenly called upon to lead he most sophisticated police force in the country. To Ana Belmonte, this is the promotion of her lifetime, to the Criminal Police, this is a shake-up in their deep-seated hierarchy. This young inspector will be confronted with crimes that are tough to crack, where everyone is a suspect and leads can lead to the most unexpected places. But she’ll also have to face the jealousy and anger within her own department, where there are as many allies as there are enemies, and she’s a woman in a men’s world. Having been promoted by her former stepfather and national director Alberto Machado, Ana is going to permanently change the lives of those around her, whether they like it or not.

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A Portuguese horror and fantasy anthology.

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Humberto hanged himself. Catarina, Paulo and Victor want the company where Humberto used to work for to take responsibility in his death, leading them to kidnappe the company’s director in an act of despair. Who is Humberto? What company is that? In which paths will he take us, after his death? Cinerama is an edgy, enigmatic, but not distant film that brings up genres of cinema as well as other forms of art like dance, theatre and poetry. The film reflects ways of being in life.

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A story about art and educated men, and how their art and culture reveal themselves useless in the face of the harsh realities of the 20th century life.

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Dora divides her time between her work as a beautician, her policeman husband António, and her involvement in left-wing politics. A tale of love and how we must learn to cherish it against all odds in the pursuit of happiness.

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Arriving in a hotel in the city of Faro, a couple learns there are no available tables left. When another couple agrees to share a table, they spark a conversation on the city’s history, unfolding the tales of King Afonso III, who betrays his wife, and of a Moorish woman, who betrays her father.

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An authentic and convincing story of a small boy, son of a disrupted young couple, with all the typical hostile reactions about his mother's new love relationship and a behavior showing a mixture of love and resentment towards her, ending in a curious and somewhat moving friendship between the child and a Russian migrant worker who in a certain way replaces his estranged father.

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Three girls from the Lisbon suburbs, Bruna, Marta and Sara, are having a bit of fun. They've discovered that people in general are prepared to give things to young, attractive and good-natured people, and they exploit this shamelessly. Francisco, a neighbour of theirs, has given up on life. He's abandoned his wife and child to take refuge far from those who might hurt him ; in effect dying. He's ashamed of this, and never ever looks at anyone. This has given him, amongst the women of the neighbourhood, the reputation of being able to tell, just by looking at a couple, how long they'll stay together. The sudden news of the death of his much loved wife, upsets Francisco's routine.

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Artist/writer/director/producer Siegfried follows a street hustler/artist Sansa who makes his way from Paris to Russia using his street smarts. Sansa is charming and careless, living the bohemian life. His encounters are numerous, mostly with feminine characters, until he gets attached to an old and eccentric orchestra conductor who becomes a kind of father figure.

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João Vuvu, lives alone in a house that requires regeneration but due to being alone he is unable to do the work. On his son's release from prison and João's ensuing deception triggers a series of somber events.

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David has a wife and young daughter. In a few days he will be moving abroad with his family. The death of his grandfather obliges him to return to the village of his birth and a family he hasn’t seen in years. There he meets his cousin's wife Ana, who intrigues him, and this trip, which should have ended with the funeral, turns into a long stay.

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It's the dawn of April 25, 1974, when Marco, a 25-year old Italian and his Portuguese friend Victor leave Paris on a yellow Citroen 2CV. The goal of their trip is Lisbon, which on that night was freed from Europe's longest dictatorship. The two are joined by Claire, Victor's former girlfriend and University classmate, who wants to take a break from her everyday life, leaving behind her husband and baby son, to form again, even for a few days, the traveling trio with her friends.

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A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.

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Monteiro moved far away from the visual opulence defined by his earlier films with his inspired adaptation of radical Swiss writer Robert Walser’s anti-fairy tale. Carefully restricting the image track, Monteiro maintains an almost totally black screen in order to focus instead on the voices of Snow White, the Prince, the Queen and the Hunter, engaged in an extended debate about love, free will and the events leading up to the fateful attempt on the maiden’s life. Despite its visual austerity, Snow White is haunted by the arresting images with which it begins – infamous black-and-white photographs of Walser lying dead in the snow after his heart attack outside a Swiss asylum at the age of seventy-eight, a strange realization of the “death of the author” so central to postmodern literary criticism.

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A summer film. About summers. Two seasons splitting it apart by half a dozen years, the youth years – time it takes its characters to realise they’re getting lonely. Hellish summer ends and we’re on a little fishing village, river-side, in Lisbon’s south bank: people make life-changing decisions.

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