Rui Xavier

Reboleira, a suburb of Lisbon. After a robbery gone wrong, a car ends up crashed right in the middle of the neighborhood. The driver is arrested, but the €180,000 that were stolen have vanished. Within the area sealed off by the police, rumors spread and speculations run wild. Among the residents, a whole cast of colorful characters dream of getting their hands on the loot. Who will the first to get their hands on it?

As the afternoon light fades, two kids play in the woods by a lake. When one of them disappears, the lake and its inhabitants take hold of the narrative and, when the darkness sets in, build up the walls of a maze that encircles the two kids. While one wanders through the forest searching for his friend, the silhouettes, textures and sounds of the forest slowly exert their mysterious grip.

All sympathetic magic is based upon two principles: the first called the Law of Similarity says that “likes produce likes,” or that an effect resembles its cause; the second, called the law of contagion or contact says that all things having been in contact with each other continue to react upon one and another at a distance even after they have been severed or disconnected. A fearful man meets a disquiet woman. Do you believe in magic?

On a summer's day, a mother, daughter and granddaughter's care-free day trip comes to an abrupt end. Beautiful and restrained.

Silence is absolute and time dilates as we lose ourselves in an unpredictable space among non-existent places.

One must look into the tired eyes of those who hope one day to be able to communicate. Mother and daughter don't know how. Maybe the dog can help, but maybe he can't either.

A film about the Portuguese colonial empire as it is seen and shown through photography, from the end of the 19th century until the 1974 revolution that put an end to the political regime that ruled Portugal.

Two young lovers, live in a tiny apartment, struggling everyday to find reasons to stay together. As they are incapable of living apart, they choose to live silently. Last winter they got lost in the mountains.

“Campo de Marte” (The Field of Mars) was in the ancient times Rome’s training arena for war. At the outskirts of Lisbon, “Campo” hosts today Europe’s largest military base. In this place military troops train fictional missions, astronomy aficionados observe the stars and a boy plays the piano for the wild deers lurking in the dark.

A young adolescent, living with a swinger couple in a campsite, meets an emotionally unstable man and finds herself fascinated by his special powers.

Started in 2018, the project – comprised of 11 segments by filmmakers from all around the world – reflects on the intertwined relationship between human society and nature that is aggravated by climate change on multiple scales, hinting at possible solutions.

“Black Gold” is a visually striking film directed by a Japanese filmmaker, blending a minimalist aesthetic with the natural beauty of rural India – a true visual feast for cinephiles. Every detail is crafted with precision, reflecting a uniquely Japanese perspective.

Spira comes home from a juvenile detention center and reconnects with his loved ones in Reboleira (Lisbon), a slum on the verge of being destroyed. Kikas makes it clear that he’s not welcome.

No matter how calm the surface of the ocean appears to be, each time we cross the line that divides land and water we enter an unknown and unexpected world. Does our world remain the same when we come back on shore?

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.

Before and after a kiss

Ana was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ruled by religion and traditions. Growing up as the middle child of a family of three with her mother and grandmother. Early Ana realized that girls and boys were given different tasks. Through her friendship with Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, Ana questions the world that is promised to her. When her friend Cloé arrives from Canada, bringing with her the glowing days of youth, Ana embarks on a journey that will take her beyond the horizon.

Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa portrays a brief moment of euphoria as the occupants on the raft spot a glimpsic illusion for their drift, hoping and praying to be rescued. We can almost hear the hoarse cries in an attempt to draw attention to their desperate plight, mustering their last ounce of strength to the void. This is their last chance of survival.

Before the assault, feel the weight of the body.

'In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the belongings of each guest of the hotel and observed through the details, lives that will remain unknown', says the temporary Chambermaid in a large seaside hotel, which, unable to communicate, lives through a rigid methodology of analysis of the exterior and a ritualised quotidian. Until the uncontrollable comes to disrupts this dynamic. Hotel Royal is fragmented and incomplete mosaic of contemporary societies. It could be dubbed a film about the horrors of the soul, about voyeurs or simply about misfits.

A portrait of a first relationship, previous to the external world, the one of the family. In a winter in Lisbon, father, mother, son and daughter trace the path of a day by themselves. A film that develops through characters who have for their antagonist life itself, with nothing (and everything) heroic about it.

Paulo works as night security in a deactivated industrial complex. He lost his daughter in dramatic circumstances, and no regrets would console him. He sleeps at Luisa's house and witnesses the repeated transgressions of an unstable neighbour. Everything threatens to crack.

A man, Francisco, works in an open-pit mine. He goes to see his boss about taking the following day off. At first the boss doesn’t want to allow it as there is so much to do, but he finally concedes. The next day his daughter calls on him, a visit he no longer counted on. They spend the day with one another. The longer they are together, and the later the night gets, the more absurd the situations and moments they experience become.

Mateus Lagoa and his wife Irene will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary at a most luxurious resort on a tropical island, leaving their teenage son dangerously adrift. Before departure to paradise, during an unexpected night spent apart, the side effects of the vaccines strike them - fevers, fainting spells, shivers, hallucinations of all sorts. A melancholic mood creeps in and their world seems somehow fractured, capable of unsuspected and dangerous promises.