Arthur Duarte

Starring Betty Amann in her most famous leading role, Joe May's Asphalt is a luxuriously produced German Expressionist classic where tragic liaisons and fatal encounters are shaped alongside the constant roar of Berlin traffic.

The distinctive loves of Margarida and Clara, the distinct morals of Pedro and Daniel, the goodness of João Semana.

After fleeing from Nazi Germany, Josef and Helen Schwarz arrive in Portugal's capital in 1942, where a ship to America awaits them. But on the evening before the ship departs, Helen dies in the hotel. She had concealed the cancer from her husband so as not to burden their last days together. Deeply affected and disillusioned, Josef is drawn to the port of Lisbon. There he meets a penniless exile to whom he is willing to give the ship's tickets and visas, which have now become worthless to him, if he accompanies him that night and listens to his story.

André (Curado Ribeiro), is a son of a wealthy family who meets a girl called Luisinha (Milu). Luisinha lives at a small pension house with Rita (Maria Olguim) and Januário (João Silva), who are as parents to her, and with mr. Simplício Costa (António Silva), better known as Costa do Castelo, a lazy but highly talented guitar player who together with (Hermínia Silva) reaches success.

Anastácio lives in Lisbon and is fanatic for Sporting CP, one of the city's football teams. When the team travels to face Porto, he follows it with the family, staying in house of his friend, Mr. Barata, pretending to be rich.

Geninha and Óscar are a couple who loves music. He's a good songwriter, she sings well. Despite this, their parents hate each other and do not seem willing to allow their marriage, nor the creation of a local radio for them.

In the last years of his life, Bavarian king Ludwig II (1845 – 1886) devotes himself to ambitious architectural projects, which strain the state coffers to the extreme. The monarch, who is afraid of people, also withdraws more and more into a dream world at his various castles. His brother is already in a psychiatric institute and Ludwig is also eventually put under the care of psychiatrist Bernhard von Gudden. The king attempts to get out from under this guardianship at Starnberg lake…