Ivo Arroja

July 1956. Álvaro Cunhal arrives at Peniche Fort and is placed in the most modern and secure prison wing, considered escape-proof. Despite the tight control exercised over the prisoners, Álvaro and his comrades manage to organize a small commune and provide support to the most vulnerable detainees, while looking for a way to escape.

At the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan leads an expedition under the Spanish crown in search of the first westward route to the Spice Islands. He embarks on a perilous journey across the uncharted Pacific, where his fleet faces starvation, mutiny, and the psychological toll of endless seas. Upon reaching the shores of Cebu, Magellan is pulled into a fatal conflict with the natives by his drive to spread Catholicism, culminating in his tragic doom.

A group of friends is invited to a party, where Afonso reencounters his last love. After consuming a large amount of drugs, he is confronted by an hallucinogenic trip where he confronts his fears.

In the town of Entroncamento, violence, misfortune, greed, and loyalty rule the streets. Laura arrives there to rebuild her life, but the irresistible pull of quick money and crime immediately draws her back into a troubled past. For those she meets at this crossroads, every day presents the choice between who they were and who they might become.

The fascination with the last inhabitant of a remote village leads young Bia down unexpected paths and reflections.

In 1974, after years of civil war, the Portuguese and their descendants fled the colony of Angola where groups working for independence gradually claim their territory back. A tribal girl discovers love and death when her path crosses that of a young Portuguese soldier. Meanwhile, another group of Portuguese soldiers is barracked inside an infinite wall from which they will have to escape once the past comes out of the grave to claim its long-awaited justice.

A pagan tradition in a village in the countryside of Portugal leaves painful traces in a group of young teenagers. 25 years later, when they meet again, the past resurfaces and tragedy sets in.

A reserved student joins a radical organization in early 1980s Portugal and is shot and lynched following a bank robbery, while a filmmaker leaves the group to pursue guerrilla-style cinema.

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.

Ricardo is a teenager searching for a way out of a ruthless reality that traps him and everyone around him, preventing them from reaching for the stars.

On her birthday, Joana's joy turns to despair when her abusive husband discovers her pregnancy and attempts to harm her. Fleeing the city, she finds refuge on a boat with criminals, but realizing the danger, she sees land beyond so leaps into the water and swims to Terceira Island, leaving her life behind. Exhausted on the shore, she encounters Chico, a lost child, during a religious ceremony. Joana arrives with the child, inadvertently becoming mistaken for a saint 'Our Lady of the Sea', revered by the island's faithful.

After the murder of a local student, a small town judge faces an unexpected dilemma: now her actions can put her family at risk.

Adaptation of Miguel Torga's iconic short stories. An intimate look at a rural community in the 1940s. Each chapter has its own protagonist, whose existence is untouched by modernity or the outside world. Five portraits of humble lives with enormous resistance to suffering - and a capacity for violence that, at times, proves impossible to repress.