Primeira Idade

The mysteriously familiar face of a deceased young woman shakes young surgeon Fabian out of his lethargy. On a whim, he leaves Berlin for Portugal, determined to win back his former girlfriend Doro, who works at an architectural company in Lisbon.

Filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos sifts through the memories of her ancestors. Her naval officer grandfather, Henrique, who married her grandmother, Beatriz, on her 21st birthday, spent extended periods at sea, leaving her with six children. This is the beginning of a generational saga.

After a spell cast by Grandma Faraway, the oldest son of a small family encounters the ghost of his late Grandma Maria still living in her old house, and they chat as they used to.

In the wake of a dream, João Vieira Torres sets off to find the children that his grandmother Aurora, a midwife, helped deliver. Through encounters with the living and the dead, he uncovers tragic destinies which reflect a structural history of violence against women. A curse dispelled by the means of cinema, resulting in a film of exceptionally rare beauty.

On a secluded island lives an autonomous community of children who don’t speak, communicating only in gestures. Guided by the eldest among them, they operate like an agrarian commune with strict rules and beliefs. Adults are banished into the surrounding woods, and every year, the oldest member of the village is sent to jump off a cliff – a ceremony that is believed to bestow eternal youth on the chosen one. This way of life is threatened when one adventurous child heeds the call of the forbidden forest.

Daughter of two worlds, the one that the English parents left behind and the Portuguese land of her upbringing that still calls her a foreigner, Ruby moves between the borders of both, without belonging to either.

Wayward boy punishes his mother’s lover. Beauty and horror fondle each other. Young gods callously abjure conventional morality. Death goes whoring in child’s guise.

In an ominous Lisbon courtyard where the last executioner of the kingdom once lived, an accident is waiting to happen. After a patient game of who's observing who, four characters will collide with dire consequences. Inspired by the novel The Damned Yard by Nobel Prize-winning Bosnian writer Ivo Andrić, this is a masterclass in slow cinema, a pure 16mm cinematic pleasure by André Gil Mata.

In summer, the Portuguese countryside is ravaged by fires. Otilia struggles between her job as a pool cleaner and the need to take care of her mother alone. Stunned by this suffocating daily life, the flames awaken in her solitude, despair and the desire to escape.

Based on one of the short stories from the "Decameron", "The Convent Gardener" mirrors the story of Young Gardener Masetto and presents, in two separate parts, the story of a young man and a young woman who pretend to be mute in order to get a job as a gardener in a convent inhabited by several women and several men, respectively. Because the young gardeners are mute and, therefore, assumably unable to reveal the secrets of the convent’s residents, all the women living there take action to sleep with the young man just as all the men do to sleep with the young woman.

Cássia goes to sleep to the sounds of her alcoholic father and wakes up with the crow of her rooster bred for cockfighting. Her routine obeys a disciplined logic of restlessness and hard work. Between driving her father's taxi and tending their rooster, she is on the verge of breaking out to find a life of her own.

Three Portuguese queer short films brought together in a program that charts an alternative path through converging universes, forming a new constellation of desires, fears, and struggles. Entre a Luz e o Nada by Joana de Sousa, Sob Influência by Ricardo Branco, and Uma Rapariga Imaterial by André Godinho are three cinematic gestures that explore techniques and narratives from science fiction to horror, seeking new ways to view and imagine other possibilities. After traveling through various festivals, these films can now be experienced together, in a mutual exploration of mysterious worlds, unsettling dreams, and singular visions.

In one of the last rural schools on the border between Galicia and Portugal, Mariana, a four-year-old girl, discovers the world through the stories and legends told by her teacher. As Mariana grows, these tales and the passage of time shape her view of the world, until at eighteen, she faces a crucial decision: to leave her village or remain in this borderland by her mother’s side.

Ana is spending the holidays with her family. The setting is perfect for relaxation and for wondering. Next to the house, workers are building a pond. Attracted by it, Ana senses a presence, someone familiar yet still unknown. Alexander David captures on screen all the beauty of a childhood self-discovery and the first uncertain steps taken outside of parental control. Evocative and mellow, Water Hazard explores queer identity with a delicate and empathetic eye.

Portugal. 15th century. Monks build a wall around a forest to bar the entry of women. But in the world of the unseen, lit by their souls, women have made their kingdom of invisibility without walls.

It’s summer and it feels like everything is melting. The body melts in sweat and the afternoon fades into endless nights. Weird dreams invade Shade’s sleep and unexplainable lights appear in the sky. Between work, home and friends, Shade seems to be floating. They are in suspension, in an intermediate state in which the reality of the world does not sustain itself.

From archival images, an improbable story is woven of a boy who couldn't stop crying, creating both floods and paradises.