Leonardo Simões

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.

A widowed theater actor relives his memory of a young love.

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

A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.

Greice, a Brazilian girl studying in Lisbon, gets involved with a mysterious guy and ends up getting accused of a strange incident that occurs at the students' welcoming party, which forces her to return to her hometown to renew her residence permit. Hidden in a hotel, while preventing her mother from discovering she’s back in the country and with the help of some friends, Greice tries to find a place of comfort in the world.

A documentary that portrays not only the poet and painter Mario Cesariny but as well his life, his journey and his individuality.

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.

Through a city that carries the weight of broken expectations and tough absencies, we follow the day of three young adults. César who got into a photoshoot by accident, Chloé who hopes to find a place to do her own work, and Helena who is back in her town for some days, only to find the living shadow of a loss.

It’s Autumn. A young woman and an older man travel by train to Douro, looking for a light phenomenon. They wait during the day but it’s in the silence of the night that things starts to appear. The invisible becomes visible, but is it still possible to believe?

Victor is a poor and submissive man who serves his general and the palace of an aristocratic family. Haunted by the red lips of his beloved Maria, he suffers unbearable hallucinations that lead him to the great precipice of death. “Illicit Trade” explores 3 texts by Georg Büchner - "Woyzeck", "Leonce and Lena" and “The Hessian Courier". A film adaptation of the German author's literary universe that is as anachronistic as imminently actual.

Four voices and their visions of Guimarães, cradle city of the Portuguese nation and European Capital of Culture in 2012.

The story of three young Cape Verdean sisters upon their arrival at a foreign European port, in an attempt to escape another devastating eruption of the volcano Fogo. In this unknown country, they roam, hand in hand, evoking their secret fears through music and singing.

A Lisbon night is traversed by the intensity of René, a precarious young Brazilian who has anchored in town, immersed in personal and existential conflicts. Queer parties, love, rejection and loneliness move through her body, out of place between the two continents. Stephanie Ricci captures the experiences of a free soul on the run, of one who doesn’t know where, how and when, with vivid sequences and conversations that impregnate a magnificent city portrait.

There is a long night when Hugo, a civil servant, is sitting on the stairs of the Ministry where he works. He can’t face going home. The images of the mysterious 8 mm films he found in António’s house after he passed away keep coming back to his mind. Hugo remembers the day when Antonio, his superior at the Ministry, told him that he was going to die. Indirectly, Antonio seemed to want to tell him something about Hugo himself. Hugo’s desire to understand what had remained unsaid between the two of them, triggers other memories from the past. Hugo unexpectedly thinks back on the last time he saw the woman he loved, Adriana, and relives once more what he feels has been his unlived life.

A participant in a coup d'état by young commissioned officers, Ventura loses his way within the woods. Eventually, Ventura is admitted into a mental hospital where he has conversations with "ghosts" of the past in the hospital's elevator.

During their vacation in Morocco, David suggests to Laura that they visit Vasco, an old friend of his. Laura objects, but David eventually convinces her, leading her on a journey of no return, where they will experience an insane game of jealousy and the realization of a conquest that will prove fatal.

In a spa surrounded by mountains of salt, guests relax while workers collect the glowing crystals in the sun. Children slip away, a woman drifts through. As night falls, the space transforms, shaped by the desires of its visitors.

Ima is a little girl who passed away too soon. Desperate to talk to her grandmother, she decides to possess a young boy. But an old spirit is interfering with her plans. Inventive and playful, Why Are You Image Plus? is a jewel of irony and a precise satire of the almighty Catholic Church.

Five workers on an assembly line at a large company based in an airport challenge the impossibility of changing the social division of labor, carried out in accordance with the classical principles of specialization and segmentation.

An elementary school class without a teacher, a contract signing with a giant football club and a new year's eve party. Three tales tinged with aspiration and the desire to escape express a look into a youth absorbed by the power of dreams and the harshness of reality. A generation facing growth in tension with the future.

Joáo Bénard da Costa, director of the Portuguese National Film Archives [deceased in 2009], interviews the dean of contemporaneous film directors [96-years-old then]. Two humanists of different philosophical backgrounds, both with their long, entire lives dedicated to culture in general (music, painting, literature) and to film in particular, discuss freely, sometimes haltingly, the director's power as a creator or a magician, the philosophy beyond particular scenes in classic movies, film technique, the importance of color, sound and music to films, art versus entertainment, and much more. Their talk takes place in a museum room, seating in front of "The Annunciation" (a 1510 oil painting by João Vaz, a Portuguese artist), which eventually leads to a discussion of 'Leonardo da Vinci', and the relationship between a trend-setter master and his disciples.

An adaptation of the 1907 political novel of the same title by Joseph Conrad set in Portugal during the so-called "Hot Summer" of 1975, re-contextualizing the anarchist prose within the Carnation Revolution.