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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 36 movies from ICA
1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small for his aspirations and he decides to head to Brazil, leaving his sisters in charge of the household. In parallel with Vitalino’s story, If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal portrays the world of Paulo Rocha rummaging through his films and ghosts over the years.
Sep 2013
On set, in the middle of the Atlantic Forest, a stressed film director begins another day of filming, reproducing the celebration of the first mass in Brazil. Suddenly three strange agents emerge from the forest and abruptly interrupt the scene. Authoritarians, they confiscate the filmed negatives. The paranoid director grumbles: "Are they from the government?". The execution of the film is compromised. Will the director in trouble be able to complete his film?
Oct 2014
A film about General Humberto Delgado's brutal assassination by the Portuguese fascist police in 1965.
Nov 2012
Shaken by a divorce in the 1920s, Portuguese poetess Florbela Espanca uses her writing to deal with her tumultuous relationship with men, eroticism and love.
Mar 2012
A nun is called upon to adopt her 15-year-old nephew, and as a consequence religious, familial and sensual love become entangled.
Oct 2020
This documentary portrait covers all the themes of Daveau’s rich life: from her field research and private life to feminism and the influence of the modern age on family relationships and science. Her passionate life is examined in detail in an inexhaustible series of stunning archival photos and home videos recorded by Daveau, and in voice-over she speaks openly, extensively and full of wonder about life and the world around her.
Oct 2019
In 2016, Edgar Pêra released The Amazing Spectator, a playful investigation into cinema’s disquieting essence that had everything from negative film images of boobs and positively splendid interviews to a donkey hand puppet. The film and an accompanying book formed his PhD thesis. But as so often with him, projects turn into obsessions – especially when there are masses of notions not pondered, thoughts not elaborated upon. And so KINORAMA - Beyond the Walls of Cinema was born, a stand-alone continuation of The Amazing Spectator that looks at cinema’s future in cyberspace and, accordingly, perhaps the end of its enslavement to figurative representation, the 'stupid sacred in narrative cinema' (to use a Pêra’ism), realism and artificiality in 3D cinema, and many other aspects.
Jan 2019
In a city where nature has been forbidden, a small crime by a simple man triggers a chain of unexpected consequences.
Nov 2019
Portugal, 1944. In a country oppressed by a brutal dictatorship, there are those who resist and mobilize the people to fight for bread and freedom, even if it cost them prison, torture or their lives.
Nov 2013
Forty years ago, Sério Fernandes was a television advertising director and owner of one of the most successful advertising companies in Portugal. That's when he decides to leave everything to focus on his own movies. Nowadays, Sério Fernandes is known as the master of Oporto’s school.
Ashore portrays the life of a singular fisherman in an ancient riverfront community near Lisbon. Divided between the quiet solitude of the river and the family ties that wash him ashore, the film follows Albertino Lobo, as nature renews itself with each season cycle.
Nov 2018
A film about the vortex of time. It’s also about childhood and how it marks us for life. It’s a film that speaks of the relationship a son has with his father. And of the many words never spoken because they’re written in one’s heart.
«My grandma had a great strength and love for life which made me believe that some of us were able to become immortals and escape death. When she passed at the age of 92, her death was a surprise to me, which I was not prepared for. The cinema has the immense power of creating the illusion of life and its protection. This film is my attempt to rescue my grandma from death. It is not a documentary about my grandma but a film with my grandma. I wanted to film a ghost and then return it to the realm of the living, like Orfeu tried with Eurídice. It is a route to resurrection. It is my way of giving her immortality which I deem to be her right.»
May 2019
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
I haven’t seen my father for a decade. Together with my colleagues from cinema school, I return to the place where I was born, and a reunion seems inevitable.” Miguel de Jesus
Three students hangout in a living room. What Hugo and Paulo don't know, however, is that this night is not like the others. Luís has something to reveal to them, a secret with apocalyptic consequences, that will test their friendship.
Sep 2025
From Sunday to Sunday, the Arcozelo football field is battered by the North wind. The lawn has to be swept and lots of clothes washed. - The boys are coming! - The two equipment managers, São and Cunha, know the name of the little players. Everyone is taken care of and the socks drying on the goals are also to be lent.
According to Sigmund Freud: “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways”. “Umbral” materialises the moral dilemma of whether there is a cause and effect link between trauma and criminal behaviour.
Sep 2024
Ema tries to end her insomnia. However, in her last effort, while walking by the sea, the line between sleep and reality merges, leading her to question what has been real until now.
Jul 2024
As a result of the pandemic and the economic crisis, there is a widespread revolt in the main cities of the country and Paulo and Cristina, an upper-middle-class couple with a newborn child, only do not join the popular indignation because they agreed, that same night, to organize a dinner for two friends: João, going through a divorce process that plunges him into a strange depression; and Raquel, Cristina's childhood friend who has spent the last few years crossing the planet on a journey of self-discovery. It's a night where, while the world changes outside, people reveal themselves inside, in this apartment where the confrontation between the real and the virtual reveals the most terrible truths.
Jun 2022