Centro Português de Cinema (CPC)

Every year, especially in August, thousands of emigrants return to their villages from France, Germany and other countries of immigration. In 1975 these migrants are faced with popular festivities that are celebrated but, now, also with the political turmoil of the post 25 April. Before the revolution, coming back was only limited to those who left the country legally ...

The film sought to portray a relatively unknown and isolated rural world and, through a highly politicized discourse, affirmed the genuineness of “folk culture.” Representative of the new documentary film movement that developed in Portugal after the revolution, the movie encouraged the local retrieval of the Caretos tradition. A ritual that seemed to be doomed by the conjoined impact of emigration, the colonial war and the crisis of agriculture was thus brought back to life. - Paulo Raposo

A young girl, Benilde, so protected by her religious family that she seemingly knows nothing about procreation, insists that her mysterious pregnancy is a miracle; however, her distressed bourgeois family decides that Benilde has lost her mind.

The gritty lives of Portuguese villagers are shown in this action drama which shows the interaction between a married couple who have taken an unusual vow of celibacy and a gang of gypsies who are terrorizing their village. The film highlights many ancient religious traditions still current in these regions, as the villagers, devout Catholics, support the gypsy con-men by buying religious relics from them.

A portrait of the everyday life of a typical middle-class family in parallel with the fall of the "Estado Novo", the 48-year dictatorship led by Salazar. The daughters' conflicts and frustrations with their parents, their grandmother and their maid find an obvious echo in the country's collective events. The Carnation Revolution is about to explode.

The first feature in António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro’s trilogy is a journey through this almost mythical region of north-east Portugal, a tapestry of micronarratives where past, present and future become intertwined.

The Soares are a bourgeois couple, living in a good neighbourhood of Lisbon, but João, their son, is not integrating well in that pattern. He attends more political meetings than classes at the Faculty of Economy, and gets a job but that's short lived because his female boss makes him her lover. He longs for the coffee shops, and the companions of old, but he doesn't get true love from anyone.

In his childhood haunts, in the village of Várzea dos Amarelos, the filmmaker films peasant life with its seasonal and daily rituals: a festive meal, the slaughter of a pig, bread-making. The film slides into imagination and blends with fiction: memories and dreams, imagination and reality intermingle in this work full of enthusiasm that has an enormous freedom of form and a zest for life and discovery of the world. With a strong documentary element, it mixes professional actors with the inhabitants of a small village, telling the story of a small film crew in a village living day to day.

Centered on an elderly matriarch and her family in the Trás-os-Montes region of Portugal. An exploration of the cycle of life and death, using the main character, Ana, as an emblem of a life lived in harmony with nature and tradition.

Jaime, a poem of suffering and loneliness, describes the existence and pictorial work of a man isolated in a psychiatric hospital.

The film documents the places where the Portuguese painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992), and Hungarian Arpad Szenes were born, met, and lived together, painting, and living to each other.

A representation of fiction and documentary about the museum of Óbidos, Portugal.

This is an intriguing avant-garde look at what motivates the leisurely classes in Portugal, for better or worse, by director Manoel de Oliveira. Set in a spacious country home peopled with a wide-ranging cast of characters, the drama begins as the friends of a widow come to console her on the loss of her husband. But at one point, the widow goes upstairs, encounters her husband, and is faced with his accusations about the past. This event and others provide the means of revealing the petty, self-serving, egocentric, and romantic pursuits of the melange of people in the house. - Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A borderland village of Trás-os-Montes, 27 km away from Bragança, Rio de Onor preserved - due to its isolated location - the old communitarian practices, of farmers and shepherds, that define it as an important and unmistakable center of this region.

Maria works in a German umbrella factory as the foreman of the production sector. João Lucas has given up on living a normal life and practically lives in bed, in the midst of green plants. His father expressly desired that his son film this eccentric daily life in 8 mm format. Maria’s wages are dilapidated to the last penny by this amateur, monstrous, family movie production.

Jorge Lopes is a journalist in a Lisbon daily newspaper. He does story after story in the Portuguese capital, covering all the aspects of its life, accompanied when necessary by Antonio, his photographer.

Artur is in Lisbon for his holidays, wonders aimlessly, and is picked up by Rui, a young man who is into marketing and advertising. Joana is in Lisbon for holidays, but also trying to escape from a mysterious, dark passion. Artur and Joana come together, find common roots in their rural background.