Mariana Gaivão

On his deathbed, His Majesty Alfredo, King without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories from the time when he dreamt of becoming a fireman. His encounter with instructor Afonso from the fire brigade, opens a new chapter in the life of the two young men devoted to love and desire, and the will to change the status quo.

Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones.

Maria starts to show signs of wanting to belong somewhere else: scales appear on her skin, roots appear on her legs, and she hears the sound of water - she dreams of being a fish. One day her daughter comes across her disappearance and reconstructs, through the memory of her gestures and meetings with her mother, a possible explanation for her escape.

Rui is in the process of separation from Silvia, his wife and John, his son, realizing that his father can not get out of this situation and that he will never be happy, decides to ask for help from the mythical Bolivian hero "El Justiciero".

October 2019, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk (UK). Three months before Brexit. Hundreds of Portuguese migrant workers pour into town, seeking work at the local turkey factories. Tânia (The Mother of the Portuguese), a former worker in these poultry plants, is now married to an English hotel owner. She is the perfect facilitator for the Portuguese workers, but dreams of becoming a British citizen and leaving this dirty business behind by transforming her husband’s derelict hotels into refurbished senior citizens homes.

The mountain burns in the August heat. A firefighter falls, swallowed by the ground. The broken body survives as it can. Outside, the night descends.

Photography is diary... diary is life... in the end, the world and photography always end up alone, with each other.

An homage to Pina Bausch.

'Bué Sabi' (pronounced "bweh sabi") portrays the unlikely friendship of three female characters: a troubled girl of Gypsy descent who lives in one of Lisbon's toughest neighbourhoods, her best friend from Cape Verde and a young middle-class girl. Apart from their differences, they are good friends. Until one fateful night in Lisbon...

A man goes on a journey for a slice of apple pie.

Summertime. Sam and Adele are on a beach holiday in Portugal. When Sam locks eyes with Miguel, the attraction between them throws Sam, Adele, Miguel, and his friend Santiago into a new configuration. The shelter of the woods and the dynamism of the sea lead into a night of secrets and revelations.

A film about General Humberto Delgado's brutal assassination by the Portuguese fascist police in 1965.

Tradition says that on 13 June, Saint Anthony’s Day (the national holiday of Lisbon’s patron), lovers must offer small vases of basil with paper carnations and flags with popular poems as a token of their love.

Daughter of two worlds, the one that the English parents left behind and the Portuguese land of her upbringing that still calls her a foreigner, Ruby moves between the borders of both, without belonging to either.

On a summer's day, a mother, daughter and granddaughter's care-free day trip comes to an abrupt end. Beautiful and restrained.

Paris, March 1939. While the march of the Nazi troops makes itself heard throughout Europe, exiled artists and intellectuals from all over the world still converge in the French capital. Portuguese composer Fernando Lopes-Graça is among them, sharing this cosmopolitan environment, on the verge of rupture. A happy coincidence brings him into the presence of the man he considers his master, the intransigent Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. For Lopes-Graça, the occasion presents itself as a unique opportunity to show Bartók his scores...

What the ocean bringeth, the ocean taketh away

A young man drifts through a post-disaster African landscape looking for his mother's ghost.

Years after a sudden departure that left open wounds, Helena returns to the isolated coastal village where she grew up. Nestled between the Atlantic-battered cliffs and the constant echo of a lighthouse that insists on illuminating the past, she searches for answers about her sister's disappearance. However, in that community shaped by isolation, the inhabitants harbor secrets as deep as the ocean.

Varziela, Vila do Conde, the biggest Chinatown in Portugal. A man wearing a hat and a missing woman. A high-heeled shoe, a blond wig and a Chinese dress. The confrontation between the East Wind and the Red Dragon; the cardinal points switched as in an ultimate Mahjong game.

How would it look like, the body of Dom Afonso Henriques, first king of Portugal, tutelary figure, subject to successive mythifications throughout Portuguese history?

From our window one can see a set of the film The Green Years, directed by Paulo Rocha in 1963. This was our starting point: guided by Rocha's gaze, we look back at the places of that film. The successive geological, urbanistic and social strata of Lisbon, besieged by the pandemic that interrupted the shooting, are drawn out in front of our camera, like a contemporary jazz impro from a score written in 1963.

In 2011 Portugal began the so-called "year of the Troika" (EU, IMF and ECB budget cuts and economic restructuring), with the level of debt among the Portuguese people reaching staggering amounts and a growing number of families and companies unable to repay their installment loans. Jorge is an unemployed boxer on the verge of losing his son and his wife, who has decided to return to Brazil. As a means of paying off his debt and persuading his wife to remain in Portugal, Jorge accepts a job with a debt-collection agency, which will drag him into a world of violence and crime.