João Pinto Nogueira

Lisbon by night, through the eyes of a young woman who lives freely, and a neighbour who follows her everywhere, from a distance.

Redheaded twins Armando and Beatriz always dreamed of being firefighters but during a rainy, uneventful winter they find themselves spending less time putting out infernos than they do helping neighbors who’ve locked themselves out of their apartments. This is how Armando meets a pretty young woman with whom he begins a tentative courtship. But soon a rift grows between the siblings and, spurred by Armando’s exaggerated stories about his nascent relationship, Beatriz begins experiencing aural hallucinations that can only be remedied through music and, finally, the love of a stranger. Pinto made this impassioned fairy tale as part of a series of films about the four elements. - FilmLinc

"The Lurking Fear" interviews Portuguese citizens whose lives where hit by the torture of its fascist political police.

A film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel "Hard Times" set in a Portuguese industrial town of the 1980s.

We stare at mirrors as if 'image' was a weapon of self-defense. At night, I hide in actors' dressing rooms for a working class experience. By day, I face an old theatre being razed to the ground, making way for a parking lot. Graffitis have curtains, the nose cap of an umbrella arises from a mount of sand. Oh, Happy Days! No need to stage anything! The bulldozer is a dinosaur whose teeth and gracious neck swings by a EU flag. In the boxes, we await the audience. Sometimes, nobody comes. Lost in a symbolic show of reality, I can only watch the world's end because all the endangered species perform and a reflecting labyrinth of life stories breaks through the glass of the Economic Eating Machine. Even when the sky is falling, theatre will always happen. So, choose the right place.

Nuno Bragança. Author of three novels: "A Noite e o Riso" (The Night and Laughter), "Directa" and "Square Tolstoi." A collection of short stories: "Estação" (Station). And a posthumous novella: "Do Fim do Mundo" (From the End of the World). Screenwriter of "Os Verdes Anos" (The Green Years), the inaugural film of Cinema Novo Português, and co-director, with Gérard Castello-Lopes and Fernando Lopes, of the film "Nacionalidade: Português" (Nationality: Portuguese). A Catholic from a conservative family, he was a member of MAR (Movimento de Acção Revolucionária). He joined the Revolutionary Brigades of Carlos Antunes and Isabel do Carmo while working at Portugal's permanent representation to the OECD. On February 7, 1985, he died at the age of 55 in a hotel room in Lisbon. Nuno Bragança, who was he?

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...

Lúcia is an independent woman who lives alone in Lisbon. Her father commits suicide leaving her a message on phone recorder, revealing a letter he wrote. However Lúcia can't find it in her father's house. On that visit she ends up meeting with her mother, a known political activist with whom she has a distant and tense relationship. In hope of finding the letter, Lúcia leaves to the farm where she grew up, on an isolated location. There she reencounters Álvaro, an old childhood companion, who shares a little life time he has left between roses and the piano, and the guardian angel that follows and protects her through nocturnal wanderings.