Damned Summer

Cristina disappears. Tiago, her boyfriend, says that she was kidnapped, two police officers (Marco and Madalena) investigate the case and try to find the truth.

At the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan leads an expedition under the Spanish crown in search of the first westward route to the Spice Islands. He embarks on a perilous journey across the uncharted Pacific, where his fleet faces starvation, mutiny, and the psychological toll of endless seas. Upon reaching the shores of Cebu, Magellan is pulled into a fatal conflict with the natives by his drive to spread Catholicism, culminating in his tragic doom.

It's last week at school, but Simon's not studying for his finals. His parents have divorced and seem to be waiting for a change that never comes. Simon gets tired of waiting. Could he get a one-way ticket to the USA? Would it be possible to make objects explode from afar? And what if time could be reversed? Or if freedom is only to be found in movies?

Sergio travels to Guinea-Bissau to work for an NGO as an environmental engineer on a road project between the desert and the forest. There, he becomes entangled in an intimate yet unbalanced relationship with two inhabitants of the city, Diara and Gui. As neo-colonial dynamics among the expatriate community unravel, this fragile bond becomes his only refuge from an impending collapse into solitude or barbarism.

Lisbon, 1980s, Rosa, a woman joins a group of young people disappointed at the post-Revolutionary Portugal. Part of a far-left clandestine armed organization, they share political views and a daily life that makes them grow closer. But their idealism collides head-on with a changing country and a large-scale police operation targeting them. Fleeing on a road with no return and no way forward, their existence is made up of bank robberies, bombs, friendships, prison, love and death. Trapped, their only choice is to keep on the run until they get arrested or killed.

In a family-run hotel near the northern coast of Portugal, several women from the same family, spanning different generations, live together. Their relationship, poisoned by bitterness, struggles to survive in the decaying hotel. The unexpected arrival of a granddaughter in this claustrophobic space provokes turmoil and rekindles latent hatreds and accumulated resentments.

Along the day, we accompany Filomena, who works as a cleaning lady, through six different places.

In love with Trás-os-Montes and with his Guide of Portugal as a source of inspiration, Miguel looks for stories for his new documentary. One day, the appearance of a man riding a donkey changes his future.

In the town of Entroncamento, violence, misfortune, greed, and loyalty rule the streets. Laura arrives there to rebuild her life, but the irresistible pull of quick money and crime immediately draws her back into a troubled past. For those she meets at this crossroads, every day presents the choice between who they were and who they might become.

After a revitalizing experience on his way to work , Charlie is driven to reconnect with his past.

1970. To Fronteira's village arrives a new chief to the Fiscal Guard. With unshakable convictions about the application of the Law, he quickly comes into confrontation with the population, which survives with the practice of smuggling. But a passionate conflict calls into question all your values and your sense of duty, forcing him to make an unexpected and irreversible decision.

Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.

Love, fear and anxiety. A couple spends their last night together, in Lisbon, before one of them leaves for another country. A romantic night gives way to unspoken tensions in their life's turbulent present and the world's uncertain future.

Paulo works in a bar and when his shift is over he wonders through the Lisbon night. Between a romantic and desolate tone, Flávio Gonçalves films in the poetry of the night. A poetry made of encounters, ferocious lights and bodies that love and fear.

A hotel by the northern shore of Portugal welcomes its guests over the weekend. A man is torn between being present for his wife and the space that his mother takes up between the two of them. A mother encourages her daughter’s marriage to enable her own love affair with her son-in-law. Another mother lives through her daughter, preventing her from making her own decisions. Three families at the end of their cycles of acceptance.

Thirteen year-old André lives isolated with his father in the dry region of Alentejo, helping with his water well drilling business instead of going to school. When his father suddenly disappears, André must turn to the only neighbor in miles, a young mother named Sandra, as the only chance of finding him.

Two friends cannot find their way around the city of Lisbon. It is a film, which could be a poem, that has no genre and serves as a bridge between the narratives, forms, and dreams of the characters they encounter.

The mother is dying, the relationship hangs by a string, the new job is at risk. Marco's only chance to avoid the tragedy is to find three unicorns before the day's end.

It is 1979. Four young ladies are hired to form a girl band. They can sing, they shine with their dancing, and they shock the country. They become a big hit. They are DOCE.

In a decaying house, various mystical and chaotic figures live together and roam the endless corridors with a mysterious purpose until the cycle is complete.

A desolate woman struggles to accept her husband's unexpected death, but is confronted with his recurrent return to the waking world.

In the mid-90s, while the shadow of the millennium bug and the consequent end of times can already be seen, a deeply religious family believes that the biblical prophecy that foresees the return of Jesus to Earth will be fulfilled in the womb of their youngest daughter.

On his deathbed, His Majesty Alfredo, King without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories from the time when he dreamt of becoming a fireman. His 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.

A couple ploughs a seemingly barren land. One day, they find in the ground a dark seed that will grow and become a strange influence in their behavior.

One of the jesters of a theatre company has to leave after the upcoming performance. The performance itself will determine which one that is going to be.

When an actor assists to the premiere of the experimental B-movie he stars in, film blends with real life, turning it into an actual thriller.

Based on family interviews and records of his trajectory, the director André Medeiros Martins performs an analysis of his mother's life history while documenting his own journey through self-knowledge. André is an artist obsessed with sex and who tries to find the reasons for these obsessions in stories about his late mother. From the exhibition of his works and reports from family members, he creates this auto-fictional documentary.

A young couple takes care of a holiday condo in the desolate environment of an empty village. When the weather changes and the unexpected happens, they begin to drift further apart.

Alexandre, 7 years old, wakes up in a strange house. The village is empty. When he arrives at his mother’s house, the villagers prevent him from entering.

Through the madness of summer and to the sound of music, the past and the present of 'Morangos com Açúcar' cross paths in a unique adventure. Between the beach and the pool, the campsite and the holiday camp, long-time friends meet again and new friendships happen.

After the death of his mother, Carlos returns to his childhood home. During a long night, Carlos is confronted with the many neighbors of his hometown, who will try to test him and lead him to madness.

We stare at mirrors as if 'image' was a weapon of self-defense. At night, I hide in actors' dressing rooms for a working class experience. By day, I face an old theatre being razed to the ground, making way for a parking lot. Graffitis have curtains, the nose cap of an umbrella arises from a mount of sand. Oh, Happy Days! No need to stage anything! The bulldozer is a dinosaur whose teeth and gracious neck swings by a EU flag. In the boxes, we await the audience. Sometimes, nobody comes. Lost in a symbolic show of reality, I can only watch the world's end because all the endangered species perform and a reflecting labyrinth of life stories breaks through the glass of the Economic Eating Machine. Even when the sky is falling, theatre will always happen. So, choose the right place.

A group of actors interpret the words of Basil, Lord Henry, Dorian Gray, Sibyl Vane and James Vane, from the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. Next to them are the Butlers - figures that compose the scenic space, essentially empty. In this adaptation of a literary work to the scene, the actors struggle with the movement of the words and their suitability for the drama. This film, instead of portraying the show creation process, sought a view from afar in order to enhance a point of view on the borders between art and life.