Portugal
Planet Earth, 9177. The remains of humankind live in a post-apocalyptic environment divided into only two social classes: the ruling king and the oligarchs who inhabit the Representative Building and the poor of the world who hardly survive in the slums built around it. (Sequel to “Dawn Breaks, Which Is No Small Thing,” 1989.)
Portugal, 1975. A time of rough changes. A young gay artist trapped in a small seaside town ran by communist winds. Al Berto, the writer, embodies an entire moving generation. He and his friends exude youth, eccentricity and hope for the future – but right after the fall of Portugal’s dictatorship system, the country is not yet ready for his love story.
If ghosts can think and remember who they are, then the physical brain is not the only place where we store our inner selves. Helen is asked to train two young women into the art of communicating with the dead. But Helen’s days as a medium are long gone. In fact, she gave up that life 15 years ago when she lost her daughter. Today Helen is a different woman dedicated to her career in brain research. Things start to change when a visit from the other side offers her the design of a device that can do amazing things. But to everything there is a risk.
A story of cosmic terror about The Gardners, a family who moves to a remote farmstead in rural New England to escape the hustle of the 21st century. They are busy adapting to their new life when a meteorite crashes into their front yard. The mysterious aerolite seems to melt into the earth, infecting both the land and the properties of space-time with a strange, otherworldly color. To their horror, the Gardner family discover that this alien force is gradually mutating every life form that it touches…including them.
A reality show on an inhabited island where eight contestants must fight for their survival becomes more than it appears to be. Solum is not just a game — it’s a test, a selection process, and a mirror that confronts the truth of Nature, with the falsehoods of the Human Race.
The start of Luís Rovisco’s old age isn’t exactly cheerful. Already in his sixties, he’s still roaming the country by himself, carrying out his tasks — increasingly less real — as sales director for the company SegurVale. Sadness, resignation? Not with the songs Luís makes up behind the wheel, and that take over this film from start to finish.
In 1917, outside the parish of Fátima, Portugal, a 10-year-old girl and her two younger cousins witness multiple visitations of the Virgin Mary, who tells them that only prayer and suffering will bring an end to World War I. As secularist government officials and Church leaders try to force the children to recant their story, word of the sighting spreads across the country, inspiring religious pilgrims to flock to the site in hopes of witnessing a miracle..
Jovana Fey (Sophie Desmarais) is a novelist. Her first two books received positive reviews, but were a commercial failure. Her third, Don’t Read This on a Plane, has just been released – an amusing, risqué chronicle of a woman’s dalliances with a hundred women. Jovana hopes it will bring the success she craves.
Beatriz married Henrique on the day of her 21st birthday. Henrique, a naval officer, would spend long periods at sea. Ashore, Beatriz, who learned everything from the verticality of plants, took great care of the roots of their six children. The oldest son, Jacinto (Hyacinth), my father, dreamed he could be a bird. One day, suddenly, Beatriz died. My mom didn’t die suddenly, but she too died when I was 17 years-old. On that day, me and my father met in the loss of our mothers and our relationship was no longer just that of father and daughter.
The Residue of a Relationship is a short film that looks at the leftovers of love and tries to piece together what it all means.
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.
In the wake of his daughter’s disappearance, a father wallowing in grief feeds his desire to find her with unusual methods.
The film opens on a water-skiing accident – a girl (Délie) drives a speedboat and pulls a young man (Stan). They are both challenging their own limits when a crash occurs… Stan wakes up from a coma after this serious accident, to find out that genealogists are looking for an individual whose identity corresponds to his. Instead of asking himself questions about this testamentary filiation, he subscribes for Professor Starkov’s legacy, and embarks for the country of Las Estrellas… Purging odyssey where intuition and telepathy accelerates the journey in time. Dharma Guns revisits the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice fighting with the tyranny of Time-God…
The mysteriously familiar face of a deceased young woman shakes young surgeon Fabian out of his lethargy. On a whim, he leaves Berlin for Portugal, determined to win back his former girlfriend Doro, who works at an architectural company in Lisbon.
For Heather music is everything. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Heather has always dreamed about getting into Juilliard and becoming a classical pianist. But all her dreams get shattered the day her mum dies. Left with nothing but a piano and debts, Heather’s only option is to move in with her estranged father and half-brother. When her application for a scholarship is rejected, Heather’s last hope to see her Big Dream come true is swept away. Until one day she meets Toby, a hip and handsome music store owner who opens up a whole new world to her – the world of DJ-ing and dance music. Heather is carried away by this enticing underground world, and her heart starts to beat again to the rhythm of a new life – and a new love. Heather eventually finds herself torn between two worlds of music and as her audition approaches, time comes for her to choose. And for the first time in her life she starts questioning what it is that she really desires.
In the beautiful area of Paris, Maria and José Ribeiro lived for almost thirty years on the ground floor of a Haussmann building, in their dear little lodge.
This is an intriguing avant-garde look at what motivates the leisurely classes in Portugal, for better or worse, by director Manoel de Oliveira. Set in a spacious country home peopled with a wide-ranging cast of characters, the drama begins as the friends of a widow come to console her on the loss of her husband. But at one point, the widow goes upstairs, encounters her husband, and is faced with his accusations about the past. This event and others provide the means of revealing the petty, self-serving, egocentric, and romantic pursuits of the melange of people in the house. – Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
In 1971, António Lobo Antunes’ life is brutally interrupted when he is drafted into the Portuguese Army to serve as a doctor in one of the worst zones of the Colonial War – the East of Angola. Away from everything dear he writes letters to his wife while he is immersed in an increasingly violent setting. While he moves between several military posts he falls in love for Africa and matures politically. At his side, an entire generation struggles and despairs for the return home. In the uncertainty of war events, only the letters can make him survive.
Toby, a cynical advertising director finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. In the course of their comic and increasingly surreal adventures, Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth.
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.
A simple can of ravioli propels this spectacular 30,000-kilometre, eight-country journey through all phases of food production and the far flung sources of international ingredients. A dream-like voyage with glimpses of disconcerting realities, the story begins with a single mother toiling in one of the biggest open pit mines in Brazil and ends on the shelf of a grocery store in Finland. Along the way, the workers whose calloused hands mine, raise and harvest each ingredient reveal their dreams and hopes, like the Danish pig farmer who loves his sows but longs for a girlfriend, and the Portuguese tomato picker who wants to stay healthy long enough to pay her daughters way through university. Sumptuous photography and impressive sound design make an eloquent statement about our modern, globalized world, making us aware of the hundreds of invisible people who prepare the food we eat every day. -Gisèle Gordon (HotDocs.ca)
Shaken by a divorce in the 1920s, Portuguese poetess Florbela Espanca uses her writing to deal with her tumultuous relationship with men, eroticism and love.
Trapped inside the Space Freighter/Refinery Dédalo, Siena tries to survive an infestation of diabolic creatures.
Fatu’s father has returned home to Guinea-Bissau from Portugal to attend her wedding. The young woman teaches at the university and her future husband is a well-known musician. Their wedding is supposed to take place in Tabatô, a village where everyone makes music. On the way there, it becomes apparent that the father is seriously traumatised by his experiences as a soldier in the colonial war decades earlier.
A young writer recounts an earlier romance in hopes of attracting his new love interest.
Oliver Fellows, a failed city banker, is pursuing fulfillment on an old farm in Southern Portugal. He and his neighbor, Manel, face unprincipled enemies in a highly amusing quest to save their valley from exploitation.
Three brothers are confronted with an imposing father who avail them the heritage, identity and emotional intelligence: seven weeks is the deadline for each of them find the respect and love of a woman.
Set in Catalonia, Painless weaves two stories: in one, starting during the Spanish Civil War and running through to the ’60s, an asylum attempts to rehabilitate children who feel no pain, by teaching them physical suffering. In the second, in the present time, a brilliant neurosurgeon who needs a bone marrow transplant, discovers this dark past when he searches for his biological parents.
The Dream World is an alternate universe created by humankind’s shared unconscious thoughts. When Poet Anderson journeys deep into this world, he meets his Dream Walker, a mysterious guardian angel who leads Poet to confront his demons and his destiny.
In the middle of the night, Magloire is smoking a cigarette in an abandoned train station when the police shows up for an ID check. He starts running with no luggage, no future until he meets a dying man from whom he inherits a fortune. Magloire is now pursued by a gang. He becomes their hostage, but accomplice too. As he doesn’t anything to lose. Like someone who gets away with everything, someone with no expectations…
While the young captains lead the revolution in the streets, the people of Fontainhas search for Ventura, lost in the woods.
Recovering from a heartbreaking divorce, independent filmmaker and son-of-an-Italian-Prince Tao Ruspoli takes to the road to talk to his relatives, advice columnists, psychologists, historians, anthropologists, artists, philosophers, sex workers, sex therapists, and ordinary couples about love, sex & monogamy in our culture. What he discovers about his very unconventional family, and about the history and psychology of love and marriage leads him to question the ideal of monogamy, and the traditional family values that go with it.
