Menu
© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 84 movies from Bando à Parte
Penumbria was founded two hundred years ago, in a distant istmus - a place of arid soils, angry seas and violent weather. The city was due its name to the almost permanent shadows and cloudiness. One day, its inhabitants decided to leave, offering Penumbria to time. This is the story of an uninhabitable place.
Jul 2016
An actress goes to Azores to take part in the theatrical tour of The Tempest and on her arrival she finds no one from the company, there is not even a theatre. After meeting Ariel, the actress discovers that the play has already started, the whole island is a theatre and its inhabitants are characters.
Dec 2025
Resurrected through UK-led archival restoration NOVA 78' shows never-before-seen footage of the legendary Nova Convention where William Burroughs, Patti Smith, Zappa, Ginsberg and more collided in an explosion of ideas, art and rebellion.
Jul 2026
Ribeira Quente is a fishing village in S. Miguel Island in the Azores facing the last days of a fishing activity as they know it.
Nov 2018
Who is Sycorax? The first character in Shakespeare's "Tempest" to set foot on the island. The problem is that she has no voice. She is barely mentioned by Prospero as a crooked, old, wicked witch who vilely locked Ariel, the spirit of the air, in a tree. But why would she do that? Here, we wouldn't believe Prospero so much.
Jul 2021
Caught in time, a trio of prehistoric characters lives around a dolmen. One of them, who is hyperactive, tries to stir his mates emotions with inventions and works of art. A strange object made out of bone, which re frames reality, will trigger greed and envy in them. Super 8 allegorical on Portugal, and the collective behavior of its people.
Dec 2011
A school inspector travels to the baron’s fiefdom to write a report on a heathen teacher. Having arrived, he is invited to stay with the baron, who makes predictions about women, horses and politics while the mysterious Idalina serves food and drink. The inspector becomes inextricably entangled in the baron’s world.
Oct 2011
Inspired by popular cult, O COVEIRO is part light part darkness, a bedtime story and almost a nightmare. A child is born and his parents die of fright just to see him. André Gil Mata revisits the traditional Portuguese tale, in a fantastic movie where heads bounce, but you hear a song.
Dec 2012
Oscar is a child germinating in its parent’s garden. Its body is developping underground. Nobody knows its biological sex but he wants to be a boy. One day, Oscar gets out of the ground and discovers his female body. After this painful discovery, is his desired identity finally going to be accepted?
Jul 2019
It’s like soot that rests on the walls of our head. We can’t see it. It belongs there already.
Nov 2014
Maria is a shellfisherwoman and midwife in a small village in the Illa de Arousa in 1970s Galicia. After an unexpected event, she is forced to flee to Portugal.
Oct 2023
Two erratic journeys whose only relation is all that happens at the same time and in a limited radius. It is a film that refuses to judge, trying to tell two stories while refusing to be subjected to analogies between them.
Dec 2019
Over the dark and barren landscapes of a city somewhere in the Arctic Circle, we hear the story of a man who dreamed he was a woman, an oneiric reverie that allows him to be in two opposite places at the same time. It is a beautiful metaphor, as well as a eulogy, about accepting what seems illogical, instead of looking for meaning, one that finds comfort in the darkness and restlessness that disturbs sleep, turning it into a space for the subconscious to rise
Oct 2020
On a cold winter afternoon, António and Jota return from the front with their friends, looking for an ancient Roman thermal bath. They joke with each other while wading through swamps, recounting past tactical glories. The baths have appeared after a long time spent under the water of a reservoir, and people of all ages curious about the discovery come to spend the day. But there is something mysterious about these thermal waters - as if the baths influence the mood of the men, giving them the courage to say things they have never told anyone. As day turns to night, they confess their feelings and their fears of losing their best friend forever.
Aug 2026
A mysterious shadow unveiling a female figure walking naked towards us in the desert. In another sequence, the same woman speaks on the phone, talking about the end of the world. In a third moment, a couple prepares breakfast in their apartment, with the same woman from the previous sequences embracing a baby. What will these three narrative moments have in common? What is the relationship between them? Everything and nothing. Is the answer in the woman’s emotional words on the phone? Or in her helpless expression when walking naked? Or in the happiness she seems to find in the domestic routine? Perhaps the charm is really not in trying to decipher, but in getting lost in this visual and impressionistic poem, this shake that slowly expands in our senses. Max Planck, one of the founders of the ancient quantum physics theory, said that energy has a discontinuous structure and can only exist under the form of fragments. These are the fragments that hide here an ethereal promise.
She has a large head and a small body. Her clothes are fitted to the size of her head. He has a small head and a large body. He wears a mask fitted to the size of his body. Both hide the features that they believe to make them weak. Their special defects… A chance encounter, or rather a bump-into-each other, and their “masks” fall off, and they realize they make a perfect match.
Follows Hugo as he takes a gap year and returns to Porto to regain balance with his family, but he attends a concert by Luís Stockman, who plays a theme that Hugo has been writing in his head for years.
0
Azarias is a young orphan shepherd, keeper of a herd of oxen, where the ox Mabata Bata stands out. The oxen will be the basis of the "lobolo" payment, a traditional dowry that his uncle Raul must pay for his own marriage. Azarias’ dream is to be a normal child, to go to school, goals that are supported by his grandmother. One day, when Azariah is in the pasture, Mabata Bata steps into a mine - the result of the civil war in the country - and explodes. The young man fears his uncle's reprisals and flees to the forest, taking with him the remaining oxen. The grandmother and uncle leave in their quest to rescue him and persuade him to return.
Apr 2017
Téo, a lunar teenager, meets the new parish priest of his rural village, who has just arrived from Mozambique. As the two grow closer, they develop a spiritual bond steeped in attraction.
Jun 2023