João Miller Guerra

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.

Crista, Carloto and João are building an airy greenhouse for butterflies in the garden. The three of them share household routines, day after day… And they are not the only ones.

When her mother dies, 40-year-old Helena now has time for herself after years of taking care of her family. She works at a film production company, dances boisterously, gets drunk. A quiet film about letting go morphs into a coming of middle age story.

Cláudia Ribeiro spent seven months – since the time of plantation till the crops – capturing the work in the fields of the sisters Ana e Glória, in Passinhos de Cima, between the rivers Douro and Tâmega. It is an isolated place, where the baker, the fish seller, the grocer and their sons visit once a week. This a film on a way of life, the subsistence agriculture, but also about the humour and the ironies of representation and hospitality.

Mena lives alone with her daughter Clara. Today is Clara’s seventh birthday. Despite her limited financial resources, Mena still manages to organise a birthday party. But after a phone call from her mother, she becomes distraught and anxious.

Her name is El - a name that sounds like a letter and makes the young androgynous woman a kind of representative of her generation. A generation that is overwhelmed by all the possibilities of the world, globalization and the digital stream. Lisbon is a promise of freedom, independence and an intense life. But the question of meaning brings doubt into everyday life: what if I were happier with someone else or called another place home? When home no longer feels like home, the search becomes routine. When El meets Kay after a break-up, in the midst of her search, their story together begins. Time, space and emotions implode in "Baan", blurring Lisbon with Bangkok, past with present.

Short film about a shy singer.

Lives being lived, words, gestures, gazes cross our paths, amidst a chaos en framed by a rectangular grid of windows and balconies. Rows of buildings interconnected by corridors perched over courtyards. Each ones property off their private slice of the view. The geometry of the life of a neighborhood: Bela Vista.

While observing others, Paula is also, herself, observed. ' Know the difference between an old maid and a spinster? The old maid does not have a choice. '

Generation Orchestra is a portrait of the impact of an initiative by the same name students from the Miguel Torga School, in Amadora. The initiative was inspired by the international project Orquestra Simon Bolivar, the apex of the National Network of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela. Ana, Daniel, Diogo and Monica take part in Generation Orchestra and devote themselves to a project that breaks with the formatted context of public schooling and becomes an indispensable part of their lives. From the onset, starting with Drama classes, we discover their dreams, their relationship with music and their sense of truly belonging to a group.

1975, the year after the Carnation Revolution. Eduarda, João and Mick come from Northern Europe to work in the co-ops in the occupied farms of central Portugal. Like many others, they come to help with the land and the livestock, give medical appointments, family planning classes, show sexual education films and participate in the traditional dances. They bring a great deal of questions, but the “comrades from the South”, in turn, have more questions than answers.

School is over and there's a hustle in the air. In Porto, tourists fill up the streets and cafés. The old and decadent are now the highlights of the city’s gentrification. Vicente moves around town on his bike and watches the urban changes happening day to day. The town is no longer the same, the world is changing and so is he. Among his family and friends, Vicente lives with anticipation the first days of summer and the beginning of a new life.

Three researchers embark on a study, "10 Years of Social Reintegration in the Casal of Boba neighborhood". A film camera used for their research is stolen and, as it is passed from hand to hand, records a crime. Nada Fazi (Creole for "It's inevitable") is a shared and fragmented view of the day-to-day life of a neighborhood. An outside view that morphs into an intimate journey through the lives of a group of youths.

By the director: "Ar.Co embodies each person’s geography, it escapes normalisation. Each individual’s experience is his own. This film is my experience, our experience. Pieced together from the school’s archive, from recordings of classes by Manuel Castro Caldas and from conversations at home."

Orphan of the country where he was born, orphan of the Portuguese state. Imprisoned for half his life, never free. Bruno is ‘Ghoya’, a Cape Verdean Creole rapper and political activist. This film is a crossroads in a moment of struggle and life.

Ashore portrays the life of a singular fisherman in an ancient riverfront community near Lisbon. Divided between the quiet solitude of the river and the family ties that wash him ashore, the film follows Albertino Lobo, as nature renews itself with each season cycle.

A portrait of the daily lives of young people living in a new-built estate on the outskirts of Lisbon. School is a joke and there’s no work to be had anyway, so the girls try to have fun as best they can. New-girl Eva is very pretty but quiet. The others aren’t sure at first whether she’s arrogant or just shy. Iara and Eva head off to the beach with two boys. The lads turn a couple of abandoned shopping trolleys into racing chariots for them and the atmosphere begins to tingle. Later, they argue with the rest of the group. The other girls manage to get into a club that night but the boys don’t and must kick their heels outside. They’re bent on revenge. They meet up with Eva and go back to her place.

Who was J., a young man killed by the police in Rio de Janeiro? During the trial of this case, the defense lawyer of the cops who killed J. wants to know where he worked, who he was related to and how he spent his time. Next to the body of J. was found a backpack with suspicious material

The story of Miguel Moreira and Ruben Furtado, two Cape Verdean immigrant descendants who live in Portugal but have no legal documents. They are torn between the desire to be a full Portuguese citizen and the obstacles they find in their day to day. Proud of being who they are they keep on dreaming of their future reflecting their wishes for a better life. Above all, Michael and Ruben lead us to one question: What kind of identity has a stateless person?

“Once upon a time, before people came along, all the creatures were free and able to be with one another”, narrates the voiceover. “All the animals danced together and were immeasurably happy. There was only one who wasn’t invited to the celebration – the frog. In his rage about the injustice, he committed suicide.” Something Romani and frogs have in common is that they will never be unseen, or stay unnoticed. In her film, young director Leonor Teles weaves the life circumstance of Romani in Portugal today with the recollections of a yesterday. Anything but a passive observer, Teles consciously decides to participate and take up position. As a third pillar, she establishes an active applied performance art that becomes integrated in the cinematic narrative. Thereby transforming “once upon a time” into “there is”. “Afterwards, nothing will be as it was and the melody of life will have changed”, explains a voice off-camera. Golden Bear for Best Short Film 2016

Ubu, instigated by his wife, murders King Venceslau and usurps the throne of Poland. Intoxicated by power, this grotesque and coward character conducts his reign in an absurd and cruel way, leading his kingdom to ruin. A cinematographic adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s play, a political satire that, cyclically, turns to the reality of world politics.

Minas de São Domingos is a small village built on a mine in the Alentejo region of Portugal. Today, the mine, which in other times kept its neighbours in employment, is no longer operating. It is difficult to imagine a future for this slightly forgotten land, criss-crossed by ruins that bear witness to a happier era, and virtually abandoned by inhabitants forced to leave to find work elsewhere. It’s summer, children play in the street, tourists camp next to the river, adults burst into traditional song in the ruins of the mine. Here, everything happens as a community, as if being together was the only possible answer to the question formulated by the film’s title.

At an old manor house in northern Portugal, Ana helps her friend, Emília, the elderly housekeeper who is determined to continue to keep the unoccupied house in order for the owners who are never there. As the seasons turn, Mónica, Ana's daughter, challenges her mother's choices and the three generations of women search to understand where they belong in a world that is rapidly fading, where the cycle of life is renovated only through inevitable endings.