Mafalda Banquart

Faced with the shock of an unexpected death, Sara finds herself trapped in a maze of pain, loneliness, and abandonment. As she travels through it, she seeks consolation in the justification of that fatality that shook her so much. But what he finds is not what he expected. With elements such as flowers, blackness or Entrudo monsters, it is a surrealist journey about death and the different rituals of mourning.

Three Portuguese queer short films brought together in a program that charts an alternative path through converging universes, forming a new constellation of desires, fears, and struggles. Entre a Luz e o Nada by Joana de Sousa, Sob Influência by Ricardo Branco, and Uma Rapariga Imaterial by André Godinho are three cinematic gestures that explore techniques and narratives from science fiction to horror, seeking new ways to view and imagine other possibilities. After traveling through various festivals, these films can now be experienced together, in a mutual exploration of mysterious worlds, unsettling dreams, and singular visions.

The Forest of the Lost Souls is a dense and remote forest, Portugal's most popular place for suicide. In a summer morning, two strangers meet within the woods.

João is an immaterial girl, refusing to be anything other than what she wants to be, regardless of her age, gender or race. When Tiago looks at her it’s like she’s always a different person. Literally. But when their relationship becomes too real, he will have to confront the prejudices that he doesn’t even know he has, to understand the world that she created for herself.

In Victorian London lives a man of adventurous spirit and great wit, Charles Augustus Howell, art agent, art dealer, conspirator and master of blackmail.

The Inquisition continues the persecution of Portuguese Jews, sending Visitador Sebastião Noronha to the city of Oporto. With his family and community in danger, António Álvares, decides to outline an escape plan.

Dr. Ivan has found two radical cures for unhappiness: the diagnosis of fake terminal cancers and the temporary elimination of some of the 5 senses. But will the therapies result or will they have unforeseeable side effects?

The film is liberally inspired by the period when Eça de Queiroz was Portuguese Consul in Cuba, when still a Spanish colony. Eça de Queiroz struggles against local authorities in his defense of Chinese workers, brought to the sugar plantations by greedy middlemen and exploited as slaves. Two parallel stories unfold, that of a Chinese girl which Eça de Queiroz saves from the clutches of one of the island’s most powerful slave owners, and the other of a romance involving a young American woman on holidays in Havana.

A group of queer people is kidnapped and dumped in the middle of nowhere. Are they left there to rot? Is this a concentration camp? Or a hunting ground where they are the prey? When you've got nothing left the only thing you can do, is find your way to resist.

Two friends challenge each other into playing basketball with zombies.

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.

Edgar is a jaded photographer. One evening he witnesses a murder. The culprit escapes. Edgar, instead of helping the victim, becomes mesmerized by the expression of pure terror in her face.

“1618” is a film about the inquisitorial visit to Porto that encountered resistance from priests, ordinary citizens and the city authorities themselves, all accustomed for centuries to living alongside the Jews.