If I Were a Thief... I'd Steal

If I Were a Thief... I'd Steal

2013 · 100 min · ★ 5.5 · Drama

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small for his aspirations and he decides to head to Brazil, leaving his sisters in charge of the household. In parallel with Vitalino’s story, If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal portrays the world of Paulo Rocha rummaging through his films and ghosts over the years.

Directed by Paulo Rocha · Written by Paulo Rocha

Your Rating

Cast

Make it a double feature

3h 17m together

If I Were a Thief... I'd Steal

River of Gold

Both from Paulo Rocha.

More from Paulo RochaSee all →

Querença

Querença · 2004

In mid-September 1992, journalist Guida Fontes have to go to Luanda to cover the elections in Angola. In the meantime, she had committed herself to discovering and interviewing the poet Júlio Vera. In 1988, he wrote a series of poems in which he mysteriously anticipated the fall of the USSR. Guida has only 12 days to complete the mission.

Camões - Tanta Guerra, Tanto Engano

Camões - Tanta Guerra, Tanto Engano · 1998

Camões - Tanta Guerra, Tanto Engano

A play directed by Silvina Pereira and filmed by Paulo Rocha.

Shohei Imamura: The Freethinker

Shohei Imamura: The Freethinker · 1995

Shohei Imamura: The Freethinker

MovieDocumentary

Documentary about Japanese film director Shohei Imamura.

The Satin Slipper

The Satin Slipper · 1986

The Satin Slipper

MovieDramaHistory

During the century of the Spanish Gold, Doña Prouhèze, wife of a nobleman, deeply loves Don Rodrigo, who is forced to leave Spain and go to America. Meanwhile Prouhèze is sent to Africa to rule the city of Mogador. Ten years later Rodrigo leaves America and travels to Africa in search of Prouhèze to find out that she died and eventually meeting her daughter.

The Keeper of Herds

The Keeper of Herds · 1999

The Keeper of Herds

MovieDocumentary

A documentary about a family of goat herders in Portugal and the relationship between man and animals.

River of Gold

River of Gold · 1999

Carolina, an aging local grande dame who works at a crossing point on the titular river, marries another late-in-life character, the dredging-boat operator Antonio. Not long after their union, she becomes intensely jealous of Antonio's fondness for their winsome goddaughter, Joana, and insinuates herself into a relationship brewing between Joana and a mystical gypsy gold salesman. Soon, tempers are flaring, mystical secrets are being revealed and death is hovering over the central characters.

Francisca

Francisca · 1981

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

Sever do Vouga... Uma Experiência

Sever do Vouga... Uma Experiência · 1971

Sever do Vouga... Uma Experiência

MovieDocumentary

Short film on the creation of an agricultural cooperative in the village of Sever do Vouga.

Portugaru San - O Sr. Portugal em Tokushima

Portugaru San - O Sr. Portugal em Tokushima · 1993

Portugaru San - O Sr. Portugal em Tokushima

Theatrical dramatization of Island of Loves.

The Green Years

The Green Years · 1963

The Green Years

Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, his working-class values collide with the bourgeois trappings of modern life.

Passagem ou a Meio Caminho

Passagem ou a Meio Caminho · 1986

Passagem ou a Meio Caminho

Ambulatory history, freely inspired by Georg Büchner's biography (1813-37) and the reasons that led him first to political intervention and then to strict isolation. With students of unidentified present time (1968? 1970?), the themes developed, in Büchner, are triggered by the publication of "The Messenger of Hesse", a pamphlet addressed to the peasants, urging them to revolt. Their misunderstanding, as well as the repression of the young revolutionaries, leads Büchner to a particularly skeptical and painful attitude...

The Conquest of Faro

The Conquest of Faro · 2005

The Conquest of Faro

Arriving in a hotel in the city of Faro, a couple learns there are no available tables left. When another couple agrees to share a table, they spark a conversation on the city’s history, unfolding the tales of King Afonso III, who betrays his wife, and of a Moorish woman, who betrays her father.

Oliveira, l'architecte

Oliveira, l'architecte · 1993

Oliveira, l'architecte

MovieDocumentary

Paulo Rocha catches up with his “beloved subject” in Porto, where he made Douro, Faina Fluvial in 1929, and where today Oliveira reminisces about the figure of his father, his first experience of cinema as an actor, his past as a racing driver, his first technical experiences…

Xavier

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

The Sound of the Shaking Earth

The Sound of the Shaking Earth · 1990

The Sound of the Shaking Earth

Freely based on Gide ('Paludes') and Hawthorne ('Wakefield'), this is a film about a writer who never wrote anything and who blows at nightfall the breath of frost. The poem by Carlos Queiroz to which the above sentences belong is not cited in 'O som da Terra a Tremer', but the atmosphere is that, between written letters never received. Fiction within fiction, stories within stories, like those Chinese boxes in which there is always one inside another. Or the two margins of the same river, always being lateral.

Island of Loves

Island of Loves · 1982

Island of Loves

This film depicts the life of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Wenceslau De Moraes by means of nine ancient ballads from China. The writer married a Chinese woman after he left his wife and family to go live in Macao. Later, he moved to Japan where he fell in love with a Japanese woman, staying in Japan for the rest of his life. Mixed in with the career and loves of Moraes is the history of Portugal at home and in its colonies.

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter