From Manet's painting – Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe – two women and two men slip from the timelessness of the museum into our present day. They have come to picnic and enjoy a pleasant swim in the river. The men approach them and, with little attempt to conceal their aggressive libidinous intentions, threaten the happiness of the moment, the serenity of the place, and the integrity of the bathers. This fragment of Eden and everything around it is inhabited by a naturalized social violence...
Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.
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George, a lonely and fatalistic teen who's made it all the way to his senior year without ever having done a real day of work, is befriended by Sally, a popular but complicated girl who recognizes in him a kindred spirit.
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Robert Dupea spends his days doing various odd jobs, drinking and womanizing until an encounter with his sister makes him revisit his past.
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In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.
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A murder in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.
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A reformed sociopath heads to a remote island after the death of his brother. Soon after his arrival, the island falls under siege from a deadly gang of mercenaries, and when he discovers their role in his brother’s demise, he sets out on a relentless quest for vengeance.
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French sailor Querelle arrives in Brest and starts frequenting a strange whorehouse. He discovers that his brother Robert is the lover of the lady owner, Lysiane. Here, you can play dice with Nono, Lysiane's husband: if you win, you are allowed to make love with Lysiane; if you lose, you have to make love with Nono... Querelle loses on purpose.
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After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
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An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
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The staff of an American magazine based in France puts out its last issue, with stories featuring an artist sentenced to life imprisonment, student riots, and a kidnapping resolved by a chef.
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Nine translators, hired to translate the eagerly awaited final book of a bestselling trilogy, are confined in a luxurious bunker.
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.
A boy and a girl fall in love. But on the night they met, she was drunk and stoned and he took advantage of her. Although she does not remember almost anything from that night, she remembers something that may compromise their relationship.
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?
In 1496, King D. Manuel prohibited Judaism. 400 years later, Barros Basto, a Portuguese army captain converted to Judaism, and about twenty Jewish merchants founded the Jewish Community of Oporto, in the north of Portugal.
According to Sigmund Freud: “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways”. “Umbral” materialises the moral dilemma of whether there is a cause and effect link between trauma and criminal behaviour.
Summer of 1982, a beach in the south of Portugal. Rui and his parents live closed in their worlds, blind to the failure that characterizes them as a family and condemns them to the malaise of survival. Rui will have school exams but he is only interested in music and in the exploration of imaginary worlds that he constantly sketches in drawings. Only Joana seems capable of pulling him out of his autism. The girl's vitality fascinates him.
Two high schoolers experiment with the means and ways of traditional witchcraft, a bride with a secret has second thoughts on her wedding day, and a loving couple quietly prepares their family for the cataclysmic event to come. Six spellbinding stories about private passions, stolen moments and the bonds we form when the world isn't looking.
An unexpected meeting on Twitter, introduces young actress Luísa to António, a writer and journalist, who hides his identity using Rasputine as his profile name. This virtual relationship becomes the centre of their lives and one day, they finally decide to meet. But, on his way, António has an accident…
Poor and tired, Amaro finds himself in the need of moving. Along the way he takes part in conversations that make him reflect on his changing position in society and on the anxieties of a young adult.
Flatmates and old friends Sofia and João share a bleak fascination with decadent, ritualistic behavior, until they welcome Rayan, a stranded traveler couch-surfing for a night in Porto.
Nina is a 16-year-old girl who lives in a rural neighborhood of Oberá (Misiones, Argentina). She works on the farm and in the village to support her family, which prevents her from attending school. One day, she is enticed to travel to the capital by a job offer as a nanny, offering a good salary and the opportunity to study. She shares this dream with Lourdes, her Paraguayan cousin from a marginalized neighborhood in the city of Encarnación, who receives a similar offer.
Teresa, a Catholic girl, is torn between the desire she thinks she feels for Maria, her long-time friend, and her faith, which she is no longer sure she has. Teresa is increasingly consumed by the world around her, by her confirmation dress and by the moment that is brewing in this closed space: the confession of her sin.
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.
Vicente is an “abafador”, a smotherer who travels around with the mission of ending the suffering of those who are terminally ill and dying. Tired of living like a criminal, he does one last service but is caught red-handed by a woman.
In a digital age where everything is fast and efficient, human beings are unable to develop meaningful relationships. Lia, an unconforming young woman from this well-formed society, struggles with the loss of her father and finds herself in a depressive state. After receiving an offer that promises to solve all her problems, Lia will have to make a choice: the comfort of the virtual world, in which she will have total control over her life or the real world with the virtues and difficulties inherent to everyday life.
A mysterious shadow unveiling a female figure walking naked towards us in the desert. In another sequence, the same woman speaks on the phone, talking about the end of the world. In a third moment, a couple prepares breakfast in their apartment, with the same woman from the previous sequences embracing a baby. What will these three narrative moments have in common? What is the relationship between them? Everything and nothing. Is the answer in the woman’s emotional words on the phone? Or in her helpless expression when walking naked? Or in the happiness she seems to find in the domestic routine? Perhaps the charm is really not in trying to decipher, but in getting lost in this visual and impressionistic poem, this shake that slowly expands in our senses. Max Planck, one of the founders of the ancient quantum physics theory, said that energy has a discontinuous structure and can only exist under the form of fragments. These are the fragments that hide here an ethereal promise.
In a community recently shaken by a local tragedy, 12-year-old João and his alcoholic father make a living from fishing. However, the effects of climate change on the business, the ghosts of their past and the father's increasingly erratic behavior could lead to their separation. It is in the next-door neighbors that João meets an unlikely family that could be his only hope for a different future.
The story about the romance of Snu Abecassis and the former Portuguese prime minister Sá Carneiro.
Film biography dwelling on the hectic artistic life of António Variações, a famous Portuguese pop rock singer from the 80s, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1984.
Werner Schroeter directed this dark and surreal tale of a man determined to save a lost lover from a grim fate at the hands of a violent mob. The city of Santa Maria is falling into chaos as an armed military faction is poised to take power in a coup d'etat. Ossorio used to call Santa Maria home, and he has returned in its darkest hour to find the woman he loves, hoping to rescue her from the violence that is lurks around the corner. As Ossorio searches for his love, he meets Victoria in a shabby hotel, who in turn introduces him to her father Barcala, who for the right price is willing to take Ossorio and another passenger away on his boat. While Ossorio is willing to pay Barcala what he wants, can he find the mysterious woman before the ship sets sail?
Marta and Jorge have been a couple for seven years. All their friends think they are living a perfect romance. Too perfect, perhaps, for the despair of all: Bruno, who is much younger than Marta but madly in love with her; Lígia, who is Bruno's sister and Marta's best friend and would love to see her brother happy; Carlos, Jorge's friend, who maintains a superficial romance with Lígia while secretly in love with Marta; and for Jorge himself, who is afraid this idyllic romance will imprison him and, convinced that his love and his lover's desire to marry will take away his freedom, decides to show her the way into Carlos arms.
Madalena is a seven-year-old girl who has to draw the nativity scene. When she lists the characters in the biblical scene, she is confronted with a surprise: God, the father of Jesus, is not included in the scene. The girl is reluctant to accept this new information, but after considering the facts, she eventually comes to a curious conclusion.
This is the story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a man of conviction who saved 30,000 lives during WWII, in June 1940. Among them were10,000 Jews. As the Portuguese General Consul stationed in Bordeaux, France, he issued 30,000 visas for safe passage to Portugal. He defied the direct orders of his government and exhibited courage, moral rectitude, unselfishness, and self-sacrifice by issuing visas to all refugees regardless of nationality, race, religion or political opinions.This narrative film expresses his heroic actions towards humanity, which will perpetuate his legacy of justice for a new generation. In 1966, Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations. He is considered to have achieved the largest single rescue operation of World War II.
In oPorto there is a club, Imperatriz, where everything is permitted. A moment in which all intersect in the dark night.
Maria spends her days working in her family’s noisy metal factory. While being oppressed by male violence, she is also responsible for caring for her sister-in-law and niece, both existentially depleted. A revolution starts to boil within her.
The film is liberally inspired by the period when Eça de Queiroz was Portuguese Consul in Cuba, when still a Spanish colony. Eça de Queiroz struggles against local authorities in his defense of Chinese workers, brought to the sugar plantations by greedy middlemen and exploited as slaves. Two parallel stories unfold, that of a Chinese girl which Eça de Queiroz saves from the clutches of one of the island’s most powerful slave owners, and the other of a romance involving a young American woman on holidays in Havana.
In the 1960s, António, an agent of the PIDE, is assigned to follow Aurora to Paris, a young woman suspected of oppositionism. It is May 1968, and during the student revolt, the two young people fall in love. Back in Porto, their forbidden passion ends abruptly. For decades, António writes Aurora letters that she keeps unopened. When the correspondence is unexpectedly interrupted, both give up on life. Based on the director's novel entitled "A Casa Azul" (The Blue House).
A fine arts student struggles to finish his master's thesis while dealing with his father, an experienced blacksmith, who after visiting a contemporary art museum, decides to become a sculptor.
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.
