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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 45 movies from Instituto do Cinema, Audiovisual e Multimédia
A powerful entrepreneur wants to build an exclusive resort hotel in Villanova, but he discovers the location he has in mind is protected by local land-use regulations. He hires Maria, a beautiful and elegant prostitute, to seduce the mayor, leaving him open to blackmail if he won't give the entrepreneur what he wants. Maria has no trouble twisting Meireles around her finger, but police detectives Madeira and Neves get wind of the plan and set out to expose the plot...
Dec 2007
A wealthy landowner, "The Dauphin," enjoys a decadent life of hunting, drinking, and womanizing. He oversees his estate, the Laguna, with his barren wife, his one-armed manservant, and his treasured guard dog. When a sportsman (the film’s narrator) comes to the estate for his annual duck-hunting excursion, he discovers the body of the landowner’s wife floating in the lagoon and the manservant dead on his master’s bed. The Dauphin and his dog are nowhere to be found except for the mysterious barking sounds heard over the lagoon.
Mar 2002
A philosophy-obsessed serial rapist stalks a university campus in broad daylight.
Nov 2001
Guilherme and Sofia, brother and sister, grow up sharing experiences and slowly discovering their sexuality. The thing that Sofia doesn't know is how far Guilherme will go to keep her inside his own perverse, dark and perfect circle.
Sep 2009
Ten men,ten brothers in arms who fought together in the Portuguese Colony of Angola during the colonial war,gather together every year to dinner and remember those brave times of war...this year, the presence of Nina, a prostitute and a hunt that end in a shootout, will call their instincts and traumatic pasts for one last mission...
Dec 1999
Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells King Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. As in the book, these stories are tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events.
Jun 2015
Alexandra Lencastre plays a woman who believes she is President of the U.S.A.
Mar 2003
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.
Sep 2000
A woman takes her young son, leaves her husband and moves in with her lover. The boy, desperate to get his parents back together, becomes convinced that if only he can get his father's stolen motorcycle back everything will be fine again, so he sets out to get enough money to buy his father a new one.
Mar 1999
Dealing with a series of increasingly absurd situations and relationships, recently separated yoga instructors Gustavo and Vanesa are finding it difficult to live apart. Their challenges include meddling mothers, amnesiac students, and burgeoning romances. Step by step, they find their way back to the practice.
Sep 2024
A touching and tragic real life story about a group of Portuguese fishermen who get caught in the middle of a storm in the Tejo river (Lisbon) and struggle to survive.
Mar 2000
One night, contract killers Safo and Erina celebrate their latest work when they are surprised by an unusual request: a black envelope with just the signature 'V'.
Feb 2025
Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!
Jul 2015
38 years after the events in the Luis Buñuel classic Belle du jour, Henri Husson thinks he sees Séverine one night at a concert. He follows her and makes her face her past and then takes a slow revenge on her.
Sep 2006
During one winter night, a Portuguese teenager, Alvaro, loses his life in a fight between a youth gang and the cops in a suburb of Paris. Cidalia, a 36 year old cleaning woman, his mother, decides to defy the code of silence of the Portuguese community and tries to find the truth. She losses her friends, her job and her family but gains a life.
May 2001
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.
May 2007
In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.
Aug 2015
Joaquim is a romantic supermarket employee. He has only one friend Gaspar, who speaks almost only for cinematic quotes. At leisure, go around town looking for the right woman. But when found, she throws herself from a balcony. Then comes a dance, as in a musical, and an obvious surprise... A movie about beauty and glory that has more love stories.
Jan 2000
Undaunted by a commission to make a film about his mentors and aesthetic exemplars, the filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Costa records with great sensitivity and insight the exacting process by which the two re-edit their film Sicilia!, discussing and arguing over each cut and its effect. Incorporating comments about the influence of figures as diverse as Chaplin and Eisenstein, about the ethical and aesthetic implications of film technique and such matters as rhythm, sound mixing, and acting. The film becomes a tour de force, immersing us in the mysteries of cinema as practiced by some of its greatest creators. Costa calls the film both his first comedy and his first love story.
Jan 2003
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.
May 2002