Pedro Hestnes

Hard Times

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

April Captains

Story of the 1974 coup that overthrew the right-wing Portuguese dictatorship--which continued the fascist policies of long-time dictator Antonio Salazar--and of two young army captains who were involved in it.

Tall Stories

12-year-old Miguel is punished because he has not done his homework properly: he must stay at his aunt's inn for holidays. First bored, then a friendship begins between him and other inn's regular holiday-makers, like maid Luisa or fisherman João. But doctor Fernando's arrival is going to overwhelm the place's peaceful life and to change Miguel's mind.

Love Torn in a Dream

A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.

Lobos

Casa de Lava

The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.

Xavier

Xavier returns to Lisbon after a military stint, determined to lead a meaningful life, only to find his world closing in on him.

Doctor Chance

Angstel trades in forged paintings, under the guidance of his mother, Milady. Their network extends into other murky affairs, provoking the wrath of a rival gang. Angstel falls in love with Ancetta, a prostitute, and flees with her to the north of Chile. - IFFR

The Mountains of the Moon

This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manuela de Freitas) both loves and hates him as Joao plays on her wavering emotional state. He is sent to Italy to retrieve wayward family member Antonia (Caroline Chaniolleau), the beautiful young woman with a terrorist boyfriend. Joao is forced to recognize his feelings as the political and amorous climate changes around him.

Cinerama

Humberto hanged himself. Catarina, Paulo and Victor want the company where Humberto used to work for to take responsibility in his death, leading them to kidnappe the company’s director in an act of despair. Who is Humberto? What company is that? In which paths will he take us, after his death? Cinerama is an edgy, enigmatic, but not distant film that brings up genres of cinema as well as other forms of art like dance, theatre and poetry. The film reflects ways of being in life.

Blood

Nino, tough but sickly, and his older brother Vicente live in the country with their father. After their father disappears ― we’re never sure why ― murder is suggested. Vicente brings his girlfriend to the house, and a different kind of family is established as the three youngsters grow fiercely protective of each other. But their uncle grows suspicious about the fate of the missing father and forcibly kidnaps Nino, taking him away to the city and leaving Vicente to locate him there.

Here on Earth

Miguel (Luis Miguel Cintra) is lucky that his income will only level off if he neglects his business as a financier, and his wife and family will be well supported. Why? Because he has begun hearing noises that no one else hears, noises that bother him a great deal, and that make it impossible for him to bear human society. His wife (Jessica Weiss) is thoroughly put out by this radically changed behavior in her formerly good husband, but though she considers leaving him, she stays by his side. Deep in the mountains, Cecelia (Rita Dias), a devout, pure young cowherd, has been brutally raped by an old man. Her boyfriend (Pedro Hestnes) has killed the rapist, and fled the area. As a result of the rape, Cecelia is pregnant. One day, while driving in the mountains, Miguel gives Cecelia's boyfriend a ride. The two of them chance upon her sitting amid the rocks with her infant baby.

Agosto

Summer of 1964. The professor Carlos and the couple Dário and Alda spend time together in the beach during vacations. Away from the colonial war, everything seems lost in time.

Second Hand

Jorge is a loner and a writer of popular books. At night, he looks through other people's windows and thinks that they are truly happy.

Body Rice

Since 1980 German institutions send teens to the south of Portugal under experimental projects of social rehabilitation. That's how Katrin comes to Alentejo. She will establish a unique relationship with the surrounding environment, a situation exacerbated by the harshness of the landscape and the emptiness of a socially desertified region. Katrin, with Julia and Pedro, will build a refuge in a no-man's-land...

Step by Step

Nogueira, a man in his fifties, is a relic of times long past. While the youngsters at the school where he works as a caretaker still think the world is their oyster, Nogueira knows that, for him, most doors have long closed.

Three Palm Trees

Lisbon, on a winter day in 1994, between six and fourteen o'clock. A forty-year-old woman despairs in the last eight hours preceding the birth of her first child.

Three Less Me

A young woman, working as sales-girl at a shopping center's music shop, wants someone with whom to share her secrets. A distant mother separating from her father, an aunt who emigrated to France, and her pre-adolescent sister, can't do - neither the boyfriend. Such a confident arrives unexpectedly - but then there are three of them, one too much. One leaves, but then another young man arrives, and there are three again. One must go. A sad young adult love story, told in the first person, singular - and ultimately alone, under the rain.

Malvadez

Coming from Fundão to Lisboa where he did conscription service, Matias found that the reality of the big city is not exactly how he remembers

Pandora

It's September in Lisbon… Elsa’s young daughter leaves with her father, and Teresa, a friend’s friend, comes to stay in her room. One night the two women go out and meet Raul, a vagrant lover of Elsa. A triangle takes form. They finish the night on a boat by the name of Pandora, but in the morning Raul sails away, alone. Elsa and Teresa will start a new life...

Guardian Angel

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.