Maura Carneiro

Through saline paths, hand in hand, two lovers wander, in “Bela Mandil”.

Northern Portugal. An imposing residence with its garden and magnolia tree. As we know, home is a place that film, this outdoor art, has often used to depict less the joys of family life than a pernicious space. André Gil Mata has made it his stage, with its rooms, its furniture, what plays out there and what has already played out there. From one room to another, from one era to another, the film delves deep into this enclosed space, a kind of suffocating box.

In a community recently shaken by a local tragedy, 12-year-old João and his alcoholic father make a living from fishing. However, the effects of climate change on the business, the ghosts of their past and the father's increasingly erratic behavior could lead to their separation. It is in the next-door neighbors that João meets an unlikely family that could be his only hope for a different future.

In a spa surrounded by mountains of salt, guests relax while workers collect the glowing crystals in the sun. Children slip away, a woman drifts through. As night falls, the space transforms, shaped by the desires of its visitors.

In the year 74 BC, Titus Lucretius Carus, a young man with bold ideas, tries to convince his friend Memio that moving to the city of Rome to study is a total waste of time. Years later, Lucretius returns from the capital. Trying to find a balance between his explanations of the natural world and his emotional experience of it, Lucretius lives a deep and troubled passion with his foreign wife Isa.

In an increasingly virtual world, what are three rappers and a fan doing barricaded in a clothing store? If Andy Warhol were alive, he would say they are looking for their 15 minutes of fame, but what will we say?

An elementary school class without a teacher, a contract signing with a giant football club and a new year's eve party. Three tales tinged with aspiration and the desire to escape express a look into a youth absorbed by the power of dreams and the harshness of reality. A generation facing growth in tension with the future.

Through a city that carries the weight of broken expectations and tough absencies, we follow the day of three young adults. César who got into a photoshoot by accident, Chloé who hopes to find a place to do her own work, and Helena who is back in her town for some days, only to find the living shadow of a loss.

Os Amigos do Gaspar: Uma Reunião na Cidade, a musical film that revisits, more than thirty years later, the children’s programme that marked the imagination of a generation, bringing back iconic characters from the series created by João Paulo Seara Cardoso and Jorge Constante Pereira. Involving members of the original team and new actors, this film project is the result of research and restoration work on the original puppets carried out throughout 2022, with the involvement of the series’ authors.