Lavagante

Superlove

The Virgin Mary appears to Mario, a provincial barber who dreams of becoming a successful singer. He introduces her to his parents who decide to adopt her and give her a room in their house. The presence of the Holy Mother will soon break the monotony of the household. Teresa, Mario’s mother, starts to talk to a chandelier. Carolina, his sister, thinks she has become invulnerable and begins to hit her teacher. As for Mario, he thinks he has been invested with a special mission, to tell the truth at all times to everyone he meets. It soon turns out the Virgin is not what she pretends to be…

Far from Manhattan

Christian, an art critic, must write a study on the painter René Dimanche in order to understand why he did not produce anything for eight years. He asks his friend Ingrid to help him break through this mystery.

Fragile as the World

An impossible love. Two young people who love each other. Vera and João can’t find in this life the space, time, or identity to resolve their love story.

Abraham's Valley

Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. In her youth she marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, her father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. As time goes by she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a new lover.

Come and Go

João Vuvu, lives alone in a house that requires regeneration but due to being alone he is unable to do the work. On his son's release from prison and João's ensuing deception triggers a series of somber events.

Francisca

The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.

Blind Man's Bluff

A blind beggar is robbed of his chest of money. The theft leads to a dramatic situation in the street where he begs every day.

The Cannibals

This odd film is a major representative of an even odder film genre: direct-to-celluloid opera. It was commissioned by the Portuguese master of style, director Manoel de Oliveira from composer João Paes. Musically, it ranges from 19th-century romanticism to popular, modernist and even "post-modernist" styles. In the initially tame story, a host-narrator tells the story of a wedding between the two lovebirds: Viscount d'Aveleda and the beautiful Marguerite. However, what happens in the bridal chamber is incredibly bizarre. The events after that are even stranger, and the wedding guests and family indulge in cannibalism, among other perversions.

The Spousals of God

After receiving a visit from a messenger of God, João de Deus wins his buddy's girlfriend through a roll of the dice.

God's Comedy

An ice-cream seller lusts after the female employees in his shop.

Operation Autumn

A film about General Humberto Delgado's brutal assassination by the Portuguese fascist police in 1965.

A Woman's Revenge

Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.

Doomed Love

A loner, narcissistic and suicidal teenager attracts most of the people he meets like a fatal aura, a black light. He falls deeply in love with Teresa but does she exist or is she a mere figment, an image, a reflection? Teresa is an apparition. A pretext for an amoral violent uprising, for doomed love.

President's Target

The lone survivor of a deadly ambush against him and his team, a narcotics agent swears to avenge the deaths of his friends and fellow officers.

Trois Couples en quête d'orages

Olivier, Rémi and Pascale are three friends who have known each other since childhood. As they approach middle age, they each experience something of a crisis in their lives. Olivier, a doctor before becoming wheelchair bound, faces a bleak future after the break up of two relationships. The fact that Rémi and his wife Estelle are unable to have children puts an increasing strain on their marriage. And Pascale, a filmmaker, is on the point of leaving her husband to pursue an affair with an opportunistic career politician.

Snow White

Monteiro moved far away from the visual opulence defined by his earlier films with his inspired adaptation of radical Swiss writer Robert Walser’s anti-fairy tale. Carefully restricting the image track, Monteiro maintains an almost totally black screen in order to focus instead on the voices of Snow White, the Prince, the Queen and the Hunter, engaged in an extended debate about love, free will and the events leading up to the fateful attempt on the maiden’s life. Despite its visual austerity, Snow White is haunted by the arresting images with which it begins – infamous black-and-white photographs of Walser lying dead in the snow after his heart attack outside a Swiss asylum at the age of seventy-eight, a strange realization of the “death of the author” so central to postmodern literary criticism.