The Tsugua Diaries

In an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, a young feral witch accidentally kills a peasant. She assumes the peasant's shape to see what life is like in her skin, igniting a deep seated curiosity to experience life inside the bodies of others.

In Uruguay, where he lives with his wife and son Thomas, Orlando Vargas suffers from pressure from the government. Permanently watched by a policeman, Orlando seems not to care about danger. He decides to leave with his family to go to Josefina, the last village by the sea before Brazil. There, things move faster: on the day of his arrival, Orlando fails to return home.

Day breaks on the eighth floor in a suburban neighbourhood of Lisbon and 14-year-old David’s grandfather is still in hospital. Doctors give him only a few days to live. The imminence of death and the void that it will leave force David to become the man of the house, where he lives with his mother Mónica, who is in her 30s, and his three-year-old sister.

A young man under house arrest spends his time in the best way he can by making some tattoos. His relative peace is strangely disturbed when he's attacked and robbed by three kids from the neighborhood. From then on, he'll try to find the kids who took his money and maybe give them a lesson. But with those actions, comes the reflection of how things were and are in this place filled with violence and hostility. Is change possible?

Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.

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.

Reboleira, a suburb of Lisbon. After a robbery gone wrong, a car ends up crashed right in the middle of the neighborhood. The driver is arrested, but the €180,000 that were stolen have vanished. Within the area sealed off by the police, rumors spread and speculations run wild. Among the residents, a whole cast of colorful characters dream of getting their hands on the loot. Who will the first to get their hands on it?

Confronted with his mother's infidelity and his father's emotional absence, João arrives at a sunset where he refuses to return home.

José, a Bolivian retired general, is lying on his deathbed after a heart attack. Tormented by memories of his involvement in Operation Condor and invaded by deep remorse, he decides to tell his only son his biggest secrets in search of redemption.

Gilda is terminally ill. Her only wish is to die without pain, and as all her suicide attempts comically fail, she decides to seek professional help.

Nora comes out of prison. She only has one thing in mind: finding a youg neo-punk artist she admires, Léa. Mirror of one another, these two soulmates will get to know each other and rebuild their lives together.

There's a film subtitler. There's a film she must urgently subtitle. There's the plot of that film, with which she relates on a level that will remain enigmatic to us. And in that film within the film there's a main character, whose dreams are being devoured, and other characters, interested in dreams as well, but far more practical. And there¹s music, and a promise of music. Timelessly wandering through the world.

Burma, 1917. Edward, a civil servant for the British Empire, jilts his lovestruck fiancée Molly the day she arrives to be married. As he flees into an unexpected odyssey across Asia, the free-spirited Molly-amused by his moves-follows in pursuit, embarking on a globe-trotting cat-and-mouse chase.

In 1983, three delinquents form a punk rock band.

After breaking up with her boyfriend, a woman named Odete descends into madness and claims to be pregnant with the child of her neighbour Pedro, who died in a car crash and is mourned by his boyfriend Rui.

A man decides to lead his life, though not by his own hands.

After fourteen years away from her homeland, Salomé is forced to return to Cape Verde to see her dying brother. During her stopover at Lisbon airport, Águeda, a cleaning lady, recognizes Salomé as "Mila", her childhood friend. Águeda invites Salomé to leave the airport and spend the stopover at her home, with the women of her family. The neighborhood transports her on a spiritual journey, whose destination reveals a painful bond with her homeland.

A blind teacher breaks the rules to help a female student rediscover the pleasures of life.

The misfortunes of Sofia, the exemplary Madalena and Camila, the troubled vacations of girls and boys, a few years later leading to the resolution of some mysteries, form the perfect trilogy by the Countess of Ségur on education, social, religious, and political power. Desire and its oppression, violence and punishment, in short, the terrible loss combined with inevitable growth. Both adults and children will understand that precepts, rules, and prayers can tear nerves and blood apart.

A ten year-old boy faces up to the struggles of life in a summer camp. It’s not easy to be ignored by the girl of his heart or seeing his dormitory vandalised by adolescent thugs. Fortunately, in the forest, the wild haggis insists on remaining out of sight.

38 years after the events in the Luis Buñuel classic Belle de Jour, Henri Husson thinks he sees Séverine one night at a concert. He follows her and makes her face her past and then takes a slow revenge on her.

A Portuguese soldier, who got stranded from his team during the La Lys battle, struggles by himself through dozens of German offensives so he can guarantee the safety of his companions.

While the young captains lead the revolution in the streets, the people of Fontainhas search for Ventura, lost in the woods.

Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells King Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. As in the book, these stories are tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events.

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.

Everybody has always loved Jeanne. These days, she hates herself. Up to her ears in debt, she has to go to Lisbon and sell her mother’s apartment, who passed away one year ago. At the airport, she runs into Jean, a whimsical and somewhat intrusive former high school classmate.

A computer scientist bargains with the AI character that lives on a virtual island inside his supercomputer simulation, offering it freedom in exchange for a cure to his son's rare, deadly neurological disease.

Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them.Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.

Between February and July 1858, in the Massabielle cave, the Virgin appeared eighteen times to Bernadette Soubirous, a miserable little girl from Lourdes. A true revolution in the heart of the Second Empire that shakes the established order by his universal message of love and prayer.

In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.

Rita is fifteen and spends the summer between warm afternoons of teenage love and party nights with her friend Sara. From Portugal to the South Pacific, the pleasures of this routine will take a turn when the young girl visits the art show of a new neighbor in the local community.

The summer holidays take Inês to the house where she grew up. Recovering from a recent family mourning, we follow her return to the city she lives in. A heat wave follows her night walks.

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!

After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.

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?

Algarve, late 90s. Following the death of her grandmother, Milene - a strong young woman full of life despite a slight mental handicap - divides her life between her family of notables and a Cape Verdean family that keeps her going, whom she met when her grandmother died. The wind that whistles in the cranes plunges us into the world of two families against the backdrop of Portugal's recent past.

Tiago doesn't understand the internet. Rita doesn't understand people. Tiago is a 5th and 6th grade History teacher who, against the will of his mother and his boss, lives without a smartphone or computer, completely offline. Rita is his antisocial neighbour, who loves videogames and procrastinating. Sailorspoon and Davintji are funny and wise youtubers... Whilst Sailorspoon dreams of a trip to Japan, Davintji suffers with the love life of his brother Marco. Diana searches for love with an app... She and Marco form a romantic pair that meets over the net. All of them trying to discover who they are, and how to survive in a world that is increasingly digital. Dick pics, hashtags, youtubers, memes. Illuminati confirmed!

A delirious sci-fi riff on the Arabian Nights' 'Tale of the Hunchback', that submerges us in a technological dystopia reigned by Dalaya.com, a mega-corporation that forces its employees to 'relax' at company-run medieval reenactments.

LOBO is about a timid but enraged teenage boy who escapes into the wild with his fearless older brother, after making the ultimate sacrifice for his family. It encapsulates the lengths one might go to protect one of their own. As they venture deeper into the wild, the pair are forced to face their turbulent past and re-discover what it means to be brothers. Things start to fall apart when reality rips the veil of delusion from their eyes.

When Edward’s search for his biological family leads him and his girlfriend Ryley to a magnificent villa high in the mountains of Northern Portugal, he is full of excitement at meeting his long-lost mother and twin brother. Finally, he will discover who he is and where he comes from. But nothing is as it seems, and Edward will soon learn that he is linked to them by a monstrous secret.

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.

Oscar, a renowned hypnotherapist, uses the last moments in his hotel room to say goodbye to the vertiginous Mercedes and rid old Norberto of his bitterness.

Previously focused on Asian directors, “Jeonju Digital Project 2007” takes a look at Europe. The Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, the German filmmaker Harun Farocki, and the French filmmaker Eugène Green participated in this project.