Terratreme

On his deathbed, his royal highness Alfredo, King without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories and the time he dreamt of becoming a fireman. The encounter with instructor Afonso from the fire brigade, opens a new chapter in the life of the two young men devoted to love and desire, and the will to change the status quo.

Alberto is a Portuguese environmental engineer who decided to change his life. He travels to a West African metropolis (an imaginary and futuristic city that has both Guinea-Bissau and Luanda), where he will work as an engineer in the construction of a road between the jungle and the desert. Moved by the hostility of the elements, the oppressive heat and the loneliness, Alberto meets Ema and Ben. Like him, these two locals are driven by an impulse to escape and overcome their origins. The bond between the three becomes for Alberto the only guarantee of mental health amidst a process of brutalization and widespread barbarism that spreads among his fellow expatriates, from the construction site to the NGO offices.

Two young Portuguese women try to put down roots in Brazil. Teresa is newly arrived; Francisca has been there a while. This sure-footed, loving portrait of two counterparts, attracting and repelling, is also an ode to Belo Horizonte: a city with no tourist attractions, but bags of atmosphere and lust for life.

A dive, the midday sunlight filtering down through the water. The air in her lungs has to last until she can dislodge the abalone. Dives like these have been carried out in Japan for over 2000 years by the Ama-San.

The couple Laura and Israël have a five-year-old son, Lucas. They live together but seem to have lost interest in one another's thoughts and cares. Their relationship seems headed for the rocks, and the only one who seems to still be looking for something from life is Lucas.

One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organize to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.

Lithuania, 1948. War is over, but the country is left in ruins. 19-year-old Untė is a member of the Partisan movement resisting Soviet occupation. They do not fight on equal terms, but this desperate struggle will determine the future of the whole population. At the age of discovery of life, Untė discovers violence and treachery. The lines are blurred between the burning passion of his youth and the cause for which he is fighting. He will invest himself wholeheartedly, even if it means losing his innocence…

A young woman struggles to overcome lost love, unplanned motherhood and ghostly apparitions.

Ana was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ruled by religion and traditions. Growing up as the middle child of a family of three with her mother and grandmother. Early Ana realized that girls and boys were given different tasks. Through her friendship with Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, Ana questions the world that is promised to her. When her friend Cloé arrives from Canada, bringing with her the glowing days of youth, Ana embarks on a journey that will take her beyond the horizon.

This film tries to make a silent record of the arrival of an economy of scale, its flows, and its effects upon the transformation of an island’s physical and human landscape.

Miguel —alias Tibars, alias “Djon África,” born and raised in Portugal— is a kindhearted Rastafarian who loves women and lives a carefree life. Until one day a stranger tells him he's the spitting image of his father, “a player and a crook.” His father, whom he never even knew! This intriguing discovery makes him change tack. Particularly when his grandmother, who always took care of him, finally tells him how his father was in prison; how sad Miguel was as a toddler when he couldn't see him; how his father was banished to Cape Verde. Miguel goes there to visit him. Who is this man?

The Forensic Psychiatric Hospital is a medium-security level, closed structure, with a rehabilitation component. The service provided includes psychiatric, psychological, medical, therapeutic and social care. The 32 men who inhabit the unit were considered exempt from punishment by the court. They feel time going by. Slowly. The film settles in this individual time.

A portrait of the daily lives of young people living in a new-built estate on the outskirts of Lisbon. School is a joke and there’s no work to be had anyway, so the girls try to have fun as best they can. New-girl Eva is very pretty but quiet. The others aren’t sure at first whether she’s arrogant or just shy. Iara and Eva head off to the beach with two boys. The lads turn a couple of abandoned shopping trolleys into racing chariots for them and the atmosphere begins to tingle. Later, they argue with the rest of the group. The other girls manage to get into a club that night but the boys don’t and must kick their heels outside. They’re bent on revenge. They meet up with Eva and go back to her place.

Two men and a bird, trapped in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere, try to solve a mystery as it slowly devours them.

Mariana, an upper-class Chilean, feels a strange attraction towards her riding teacher, Juan, a former colonel with a shady past.

(within the project URB) CIDADE is a TV series that takes place in the diverse, urbanistically chaotic and multicultural periphery of Lisbon. Each episode has for landscape and dramatic background the everyday-life in the social housing neighborhoods and shanty towns of Lisbon. It explores the infinite possibilities of narratives and characters generated by the daily confrontation of the normal life of the city with several layers of cultural heritages and lifestyles, brought by different waves of migration. A network of interconnected characters, families and ties makes the narrative to evolve and illustrates the cultural, artistic, social and economic explosion that we are about to live in here.

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.

The forced repatriation of Azorean migrants from the US has resulted in tragic consequences for the deportees and their families. Leaving the islands at a young age, and raised in the US, they remember little of the Azores upon their return. Separated from loved ones and barely speaking Portuguese, their struggle leaves them disconsolate. Lost in faraway memories, the deportees come to abide in an open sky prison of abandoned hopes.

A Lisbon night is traversed by the intensity of René, a precarious young Brazilian who has anchored in town, immersed in personal and existential conflicts. Queer parties, love, rejection and loneliness move through her body, out of place between the two continents. Stephanie Ricci captures the experiences of a free soul on the run, of one who doesn’t know where, how and when, with vivid sequences and conversations that impregnate a magnificent city portrait.

Henrique lives alone in the mountains in Portugal. Having his children been taken away by the social services, one day he searches for the psychologist in charge of the process to get some sort of vengeance. From then on, he hides in the forest for several days, trying nothing but to survive.