João Pedro Bénard

Beyond the Mountains

In love with Trás-os-Montes and with his Guide of Portugal as a source of inspiration, Miguel looks for stories for his new documentary. One day, the appearance of a man riding a donkey changes his future.

If I Were a Thief... I'd Steal

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small for his aspirations and he decides to head to Brazil, leaving his sisters in charge of the household. In parallel with Vitalino’s story, If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal portrays the world of Paulo Rocha rummaging through his films and ghosts over the years.

Nightfall

A largely plotless, fado-scored journey through the gloomy cobblestone streets, zombie bars, and fetid basements of a sordid harbor town populated by German-speaking sots and Portuguese guest workers. An unhappy young couple, Leni and Anton, quarrel and split separately into the rat’s ass of the evening. Everyone is looking for love, but no one finds any—although Leni does pick up a trick.

Manoel’s Destinies

When the child Manuel wanders into a garden that is off-limits to him, he meets an unidentified fisherman, and another boy -- the boy is actually himself several years down the road. Manuel experiences three different versions of his encounters in the garden, revealing that fate can have several twists and turns in one's life, depending on decisions that are made early on.

Alfama

A and B get on the train, full of excitement Love and jealousy/Ashes and fire/Pain and sin Just before it leaves, C boards too. All this exists / All this is sad / All this is fado.

Querença

In mid-September 1992, journalist Guida Fontes have to go to Luanda to cover the elections in Angola. In the meantime, she had committed herself to discovering and interviewing the poet Júlio Vera. In 1988, he wrote a series of poems in which he mysteriously anticipated the fall of the USSR. Guida has only 12 days to complete the mission.

Vanity

Vanitas is the new feature film by veteran Portuguese director Paulo Rocha. With a script by Regina Guimarães, the film brings together actresses Isabel Ruth and Joana Bárcia – no strangers to this director's world – in a story about a depressed fashion designer who falls in love with the daughter of one her tailors.

The Keeper of Herds

A documentary about a family of goat herders in Portugal and the relationship between man and animals.

Recollections of the Yellow House

Lisbon, 1989. A middle-aged poor man, tormented by an illness, lives in a cheap room in a family boarding house, in the old section of the city's waterfront.

Tall Stories

12-year-old Miguel is punished because he has not done his homework properly: he must stay at his aunt's inn for holidays. First bored, then a friendship begins between him and other inn's regular holiday-makers, like maid Luisa or fisherman João. But doctor Fernando's arrival is going to overwhelm the place's peaceful life and to change Miguel's mind.

Imitação de Vida

Os Terríveis

Grand Tour

In 1917 Burma (now Myanmar), a British diplomat is set to marry his fiancée, but after a sudden panic, escapes to Singapore, sending her on what evolves into a chase across Asia.

Worth Your Weight in Gold

Oscar, a renowned hypnotherapist, uses the last moments in his hotel room to say goodbye to the vertiginous Mercedes and rid old Norberto of his bitterness.

Far From Amazónia

In 1783, naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira travelled to Amazonia. Centuries later, all that remains from his Philosophical Journey are the artifacts belonging the tribes he studied and the animals and plants he brought over to Portugal, evoking a distant Amazonia and an expedition that went on for nine years.

A Woman's Revenge

Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.

Journey to Portugal

Maria, a Ukrainian doctor, comes to Portugal to spend a year with Greco, her husband who is also a doctor. Upon arrival at Faro airport she is the only person from Kiev approached by agents of Immigration and Customs that lead her to a room of interrogation, without any explanations. All this occurs because the authorities suspect that something illegal should be behind her trip, since she is from Eastern Europe and her husband is Senegalese.

Rage

Alentejo, Portugal, 1950. In a desolate region, where the wind seems to speak, where misery and hunger reign over poorest, a desperate man takes his revenge on those who caused his ruin during the darkest night, unable to get honestly the bread needed to feed his family in the daylight.

Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!

Xavier

Xavier returns to Lisbon after a military stint, determined to lead a meaningful life, only to find his world closing in on him.

Patrick

Patrick, 20-years-old, lives in Paris with his older boyfriend. He runs a teenage pornography website, which results in a prison sentence following a raid at a party. Mário, 8-years-old, was kidnapped 12 years ago in Portugal. Patrick and Mário are the same person with two conflicting identities: a life in Paris filled with parties, drugs, and promiscuity and a new rural life in Portugal, where he feels obliged to reconnect with a broken family.

Sombras Brancas

At the age of 71, a highly regarded writer, José Cardoso Pires, suffers a major stroke and loses his memory and the ability to relate to the rest of the world. Everybody seems to defy the famous author to write another novel that recounts this adventure telling his "last story", the most conclusive of his career, the one of his accidental journey to the clear shadows territory.

Oxalá

A man exiled in Paris makes various trips to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution. Each trip is represented by a woman.

Alex

The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa.

Tales from the Mountain

Adaptation of Miguel Torga's iconic short stories. An intimate look at a rural community in the 1940s. Each chapter has its own protagonist, whose existence is untouched by modernity or the outside world. Five portraits of humble lives with enormous resistance to suffering - and a capacity for violence that, at times, proves impossible to repress.