Orlando Costa

Everyone has a secret. Twins Sarah and Gaëlle near 25; for ten years, Sarah has been a fundamentalist Carmelite in a Brazilian convent, and Gaëlle has been in prison for a heinous crime. Sarah comes to the attention of Fr. Joachim, a priest and physician; he can find no cause for her debilitating abdominal pain. When Sarah and he are transferred to Paris, Joachim looks for Gaëlle, now on probation and finding no respite from society's approbation. An enterprising reporter is digging into Gaëlle's life, the mother superior of Sarah's convent hovers over her, and Joachim investigates the phenomenon of twin's symmetry. Is there any release from the past?

A baby is kidnapped in a Brazilian airport. Years later, the mother lives in Lisbon and works in a strip-tease bar so she can survive. When she is fired, she joins a gang of bank robbers...

Macau 1897. Life is easy for Portuguese settlers. Young reveler Francisco Frontaria is deemed as irresponsible for all his partying and boozing. Shunned and exiled for crossing a line by insulting the daughter of a prominent family, he finds himself penniless and vagrant.

It tells the story of a Brazilian filmmaker, Lucas. When his mother, Alice, dies in Belo Horizonte, he searches for his family's Portuguese roots across the ocean, discovering an intricate love story. Lucas's father, Olavo, was the son of a very wealthy Portuguese industrialist, Joaquim, who was disinherited when he married Alice, Lucas's mother, a very poor woman who lived in a rooming house in the city of Porto, Portugal. With the Second World War looming, they all left for Brazil, settling in Minas Gerais. While investigating his distant past, Lucas makes discoveries about possible criminal acts committed by his own father, Olavo. Lucas is helped by Teresa, a young Portuguese woman who works as a restorer of old Portuguese churches in the interior of Portugal. Lucas, assisted by Teresa, seeks to reconstruct the stories of his mother Alice, and ends up falling in love with Teresa.

In an imaginary future, Portugal consists of an association of states - North and South - with zones of specific influence. City under vigilance, Lisbon is inhabited by a repressed and militarized population. Maria and António stand out in this city and surrender themselves to a submersive love. 1978

1970. To Fronteira's village arrives a new chief to the Fiscal Guard. With unshakable convictions about the application of the Law, he quickly comes into confrontation with the population, which survives with the practice of smuggling. But a passionate conflict calls into question all your values and your sense of duty, forcing him to make an unexpected and irreversible decision.

Miguel has his life falling apart, but in one last push of hope, he tries to change that and start living a normal life.

An urban family inherits an old country house located in a small village. Upon their arrival they try to adapt to the new lifestyle, but they soon learn that the village is overshadowed by superstition and mysterious folklore. As they are plagued by strange events, they learn more about the history of their family, and slowly begin to believe by inheriting the house, they also inherited a curse.

Once the boss started deducting a third of the workers' wages on the pretext that it was necessary to purchase new machines in order to compete, a group of workers went on strike, occupied the company, but were expelled from their workplace by the police. Out on the street, the workers think about the best way to make their comrades and the general population aware of the seriousness of their situation. They then decide, by mutual agreement, following the humorous tradition of cegadas and popular theater, to improvise a satirical performance in which they denounce some typical examples of capitalist exploitation. From the bandstand, which serves as their rehearsal stage, to the final procession, which unexpectedly takes on a different tone, the workers learn and teach us how scathing and uncompromising criticism of capitalist institutions can be transformed into a celebration of struggle, joy, and unity.

This dark and intense drama follows the slow and painful destruction of a young, passive woman as she watches her family fall apart. Maria is the shy and dutiful daughter upon whose shoulders the family traumas have fallen. In addition to a regular job she cooks, cleans, and studies. Her parents offer no assistance as her father is blind, with a tendency towards violence when drinking. His wife, the focus of his violence is terribly unhappy. After a particularly brutal beating, Maria's brothers rise up against the father and end up leaving the home. It is up to Maria to try to bring the factions together. Maria's pressures increase after she calmly stabs her boss during an attempted rape, and then copes with her mother's suicide.

Zézé Gamboa's sardonic historical drama follows a good-hearted, apolitical con man who, on the eve of Angolan independence in the mid-1970s, pulls off a massive swindle at the expense of the Portuguese colonial administration — and soon after finds himself hailed as a hero of the national liberation struggle.

The life of Fabio and Miá falls into the rut when differences, which are not few, need to be faced. After Fábio forget the third wedding anniversary, Miá decides to ask for a time in the relationship. When Fábio's grandfather, who lives in Portugal, tells him that he was a widower, he sees on this trip to the funeral an opportunity to save his marriage.

The hypochondriac Sebastião and his not so normal family must save the country from the prime minister's plan of selling the country to China, Germany, France and Angola, and show that Portugal is not for sale.

In 1974, not long after the death of Portuguese dictator Salazar, who had ruled Portugal from the early '30s to the late '60s, a group of disgruntled Army officers held a coup. They were even more disgruntled when they realized how the coup was being manipulated by leftist officers to instigate genuine elections and establish a constitution for the first time in Portuguese history. Though their intent was to form a radical socialist state, circumstances prevented this, and a genuine parliamentary democracy emerged. This film explores the circumstances of a right-wing businessman during those times. The man is an old-fashioned authoritarian, whose attentiveness to the needs of his mistress, wife and son is crude where it exists at all.

Two simple, unassuming, apolitical men have their lives changed forever when they find themselves hunted by agents of the ruling dictatorship.

After her mother's death, Sofia returns from a Swiss college to her family's luxurious villa, in Cascais. Through the relashionship between her father, Henrique, and his lover Laura, she will discover the complexity, egothistic, discrete and hypocrite way of life - from which there is no escape.

The tumultuous lives of a woman and her three daughters who used to live in Paris, and are now living in Bairro Alto.

In today's Alentejo, a story of love and death based in a real criminal case.

Ambulatory history, freely inspired by Georg Büchner's biography (1813-37) and the reasons that led him first to political intervention and then to strict isolation. With students of unidentified present time (1968? 1970?), the themes developed, in Büchner, are triggered by the publication of "The Messenger of Hesse", a pamphlet addressed to the peasants, urging them to revolt. Their misunderstanding, as well as the repression of the young revolutionaries, leads Büchner to a particularly skeptical and painful attitude...

Ricardo Monteiro is a successful television producer specialising in reality shows. He is 45 years old and he has just received an award for the most popular television show of the year, when he receives an ultimatum from his 18-year-old daughter Leonor. If he does not come home that same evening to celebrate her birthday he will never see her again. Ricardo is distracted by business or other commitments and he is too late for the last flight home. When he returns next day the apartment is empty and Leonor is gone. At first Ricardo thinks that it is only a game, but there are no phone calls or messages and after a while he gets worried and starts looking for her. He discovers that she has quit school without telling him and that she has lost all contact with her old friends. She has become a complete stranger.

Twenty-five years after leaving school, a group of former students decide to organise a reunion. But, contrary to expectations, these "old boys" realise that time has accentuated their differences. The atmosphere is tense, the conversation taut and the old grudges resurface in no time.

In a unique approach to what amounts to four pseudo-morality plays, director Monique Rutler has a street entertainer with hand puppets summarize the characters and idea of each story. The first sketch is about a young man who shines shoes for a living, and tries to keep up a relationship with two women while convincing each she is his only true love. The next story is about a man who beats up his wife when he is drunk, and sells furs for a living. One day, as she is riding in the back of his truck with the furs, he hits a bad patch and she and some furs fall out. The question is, will the woman be enterprising and leave the jerk - or not? The third tale concerns a woman looking into how much control a prostitute has over her clients, and to really find out, she becomes a prostitute herself for awhile - leading to some quite unexpected situations. The last segment handles the uglier side of the life styles of the rich and famous.

Antonio decides to break free of his mundane existence and rents a silver convertible to take his wife on a dream vacation. Everything seems perfect. Except he doesn't know the way.

Across several generations, groups of young Portuguese people navigate school life and summer holidays while dealing with friendships, first loves, rivalries, family conflicts and decisions that shape their future. Each season introduces new protagonists, schools and challenges, exploring themes related to adolescence, identity, responsibility and belonging. Sport, music, dance and other forms of expression accompany their journeys of growing up, marked by dreams, choices and ever-changing relationships.

Mar Salgado is a story of a woman who had 2 twins and thought they died after the were born, but it couldn't be more far from truth, and now 16 years later she'll try to find them.

Freedom is a state of mind... Carlos, José and Matias are three old friends who have known each other since childhood. José lives with his daughter, his son in law and his nine-year-old grandson Pedro. Being a grandfather is his only true source of happiness. Carlos is retired and spends most of his days tinkering. Matias, on the other hand, is a widower and lives alone and abandoned, as his son is living abroad. Each of them has a strong and contentious character of their own, but they are all joined by a deep friendship. When José is sent to a retirement home, Carlos and Matias set a plan to bust him out. They sneak into the retirement home and take him away from that depressing environment in which he was discarded. They know that they can’t come back home, so they decide to spend a while in Matias’ house up north. But, in the middle of their escape, they find José’s grandson snuck in there. Pedro doesn't want to leave his grandpa and insists on accompanying them in their journey.

A story with multiple plotlines, portraying the 24 hours of life in the beautiful city of Lisbon. It begins with three significant events: a wedding that is about to be cancelled, a crime, and the disappearance of a child. This plot centers on the lives of three sisters.

When the Portuguese police began to investigate, in 1967, an illegal prostitution network, they ended up stumbling upon a huge secret that could shake the foundations of the republican regime: a select group of prostitutes who organized parties with teenage girls to secretly satisfy the sexual desires of bankers, politicians, ministers, aristocrats and powerful businessmen: the Ballet Rose Case.

Despite the hardship, there are those who fight and overcome... Marta is a single mother and a humble woman who’s doing her best to offer her two daughters, Susana e Beatriz, a good life. But when she finds out that her younger daughter has a rare and serious condition, everything changes in this family’s life. Susana decides to seek out Rodrigo, the child´s father and a wealthy man who can afford to pay the much needed surgery abroad. Even though he didn't even know he had a daughter, Rodrigo accepts to pay for the surgery on the condition that he’s granted custody. Marta is then faced with the greatest dilemma in her life: in order to save his daughter, she’ll have to give her up. Rodrigo will end up using Beatriz in an elaborate ploy to get closer to Marta. However, his cousin Gabriel’s return to Portugal will make things difficult for him, as Gabriel will fall in love with Marta, thus turning into Rodrigo's rival.