Varela Silva

A theatre having national as part of its name, at the top of a square, reflecting a country’s history. But which one? This is a voyage through the various narratives about D. Maria II National Theatre, forged through the intentions of the several regimes that intended to convey their own ideologies within the theatre’s mission. This is also the story of those who fought against it, opposed the institution and became part of it. How can one become heir of these stories, even if never having set foot inside.

An arms smuggler organization uses a pirate television station to spread dissention among representatives in an international conference in Portugal. A French diplomat travels to Macao, hoping to locate a sexy spy who had stayed in Lisbon.

A young girl, Benilde, so protected by her religious family that she seemingly knows nothing about procreation, insists that her mysterious pregnancy is a miracle; however, her distressed bourgeois family decides that Benilde has lost her mind.

At the end of the nineteenth century, an army force led by Major Mouzinho de Albuquerque, a cavalry officer, imprisoned in Mozambique the tribal chief Gungunhana, who had rebelled against Portuguese government and sovereignty. Mouzinho instantly becomes a national hero but his raising popularity worries the State.

The story of Brazilian Antônio José da Silva, a jewish poet, playwright and lawyer living in the 18th Century Lisbon, who managed to avoid Inquisition by converting himself to Catholicism, after being tortured. But his fierce criticism of Portugal's élite led him to persecution and torture, becoming kind of a scapegoat.

Under the mundane guise of a public relations firm, Singrid Karaman is actually running an intelligence network. Her new mission is to foil an upcoming coup attempt in the African country of Myassaland, and to recover the large stock of diamonds that have fallen into the hands of the mercenaries behind the plot. She instructs a former Nazi, Eric, to form a shock commando and her assistant, Carol, to contact the mercenary leaders, Commandant St Robert and Captain Tarquier. Although Tarquier is very suspicious, St Robert agrees to go aboard Ingrid's yacht.

Mário Gonçalves, a high school teacher threatened with death due to cancer, spends the last days of his life in the village where he was born, in the heart of Serra da Estrela. There, he expresses his talent as a painter in the intimate decoration of an abandoned chapel. This is also the twilight hour of rebellious memories: love and precariousness, choices and contingency, perennial dissatisfaction...