In the outskirts of London, Portuguese couple and parents of three, Bela and Jota, struggle to make ends meet. When a misunderstanding arises at school with their deaf daughter, the British social services grow concerned for the safety of their children. The film portrays the tireless battle of these immigrant parents against the law to keep their family together.
Jake and Mati are two outsiders in the northerly Portuguese city of Porto who once experienced a brief connection. A mystery remains about the moments they shared, and in searching through memories, they relive the depths of a night uninhibited by the consequences of time.
Buenos Aires. Exe, 25 years old, has just lost his job and is not looking for another one. His neighbors and friends seem as odd to him as they always do. Online, he meets Alf, a boy from Mozambique who is also bored with his job and who is about to follow Archie, another boy who has run away into the jungle. Through the dense vegetation of the forest, Archie tracks ants back to their nest. One of them wanders off course and comes across Canh, a Filipino, sitting on top of a giant heap of earth and who is about to go back to his strange, beautiful home town, where he too has a miserable job.
Illa de Arousa, 1971. Maria is a woman who earns her living by seafood. She is also known on the island for helping other women in childbirth with special dedication and care. After an unexpected event, she is forced to flee and begins a dangerous journey that will make her fight for her survival. Seeking her freedom, Maria decides to cross the border by one of the smuggling routes between Galicia and Portugal.
In 1985, former oil rig worker Richard Linklater began a film screening society in Austin, Texas, that aimed to show classic art-house and experimental films to a budding community of cinephiles. Eventually incorporating as a nonprofit, the newly branded Austin Film Society raised enough money to fly in their first out-of-town filmmaker: James Benning. Accepting the invitation, Benning met Linklater and the two began to develop a personal and intellectual bond, leading to many future encounters. Starting in the 1960s, Benning had been creating low budget films mostly on his own, while Linklater had just begun to craft his first shorts. The filmmakers have remained close even as their careers have diverged. After the cult success of Slacker, Linklater went on to make films with Hollywood support. Benning, meanwhile, has stayed close to his roots and is mainly an unknown figure in mainstream film culture.
In a rural landscape, that resembles an old Portugal, an elderly man find out that his wife, whom he believed to be dead, was seen shopping in town. Spiteful and sad, he wants to hide from everyone, but his friends insist that he uses this situation to become stronger and try to get married again.
Canned Dreams shows the multi-branching network of the modern food industry. The Finnish consumer buys a can in the grocery store, but where from far away do the raw materials and packaging materials for the preserves come from - and through how many hands? The film not only traces the various stages of the production process, but gives a voice to the people who work as part of it.
A couple retreat to an Atlantic island to rebuild their relationship, strained by changes through the years. In this strange landscape a lighthouse seems to exert power, and a strange woman appears on the beach after almost drowning.
Your past already is the projection of your future. However, it was never more than a light in the sky.
Constantino works as a keeper of flocks during the day and as a keeper of a museum during the night. He works continuously since he has nowhere to live. Aurora passes by him every morning and end of the day. One day she is brave enough to talk to him.
In Portugal he was a priest, in Brazil a revolutionary.
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.
I am the double of the shadow of my own image. An allegory that occupies my place. This is my act of contrition. Beyond good and evil, I stand as an equation: Its result cannot be manipulated By morals or ethics. In mathematics there is no place for beliefs Just as life and death Are a certain fate.
A kino-investigation about spectatorship, a continuous conversation between different kinds of spectators: which one is more cinema: Citizen Kane on a mobile phone or a football game projected in a cinema theatre? What is the cinema of uncertainty? How many kinds of amazement exist? Does fear and belief precede amazement? What are the rights and duties of the spectator? Is the essay film a manifesto against voyeurism? Should spectators be paid? What amazes the spectator of this day and age?
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.
A compilation of films project multiple versions of people won by vida.
A writer immerses himself in his work La muerte del payaso and becomes a hostage of impossible dreams. Between crimes and hallucinations, between the gothic nature of night and the decadence of the sand, a hopeless story is told, based on the work of Raul Brandão.
On All Saint’s Day 1755, around 09:40 hours, Lisbon was hit by an earthquake which eradicated almost the entire city. 345 years later (D.T. = depois de terramoto) means 2100 AD. Will Portugal’s capital be a Garden of Earthly Delights when we reach the year 2100? Pêra’s animation classic provides unexpected (in)sights about it.
'A Távola de Rocha' enables us to enter Paulo Rocha’s universe, to gather memories and find, within his personal and professional relationships, a key to decipher some of the unknown symbols and allusions contained in his films.
