The Hero

Zézé Gamboa's sardonic historical drama follows a good-hearted, apolitical con man who, on the eve of Angolan independence in the mid-1970s, pulls off a massive swindle at the expense of the Portuguese colonial administration — and soon after finds himself hailed as a hero of the national liberation struggle.

Abel, 47 years old, two wars - in the colonies and France, emigration - several scars from many battles lost, returns in a jump to Portugal, to his lost village in the northern interior, near the border, from where one day he'd be gone, also from a jump. A letter, from his brother Peter, warned him that everything changed. Even Teresa. Abel catches sight of his childhood in the village hills, the old tribe. From a distance everything seams to be in the same placesa, the old dog is all that remains of the past. In the village the Act of Passion will be performed and Teresa is one of the participants. Abel takes the old gestures and prepares his plan: eliminate one by one Teresa's suitors, to consummate during the act of the Passion, her death ...

Lisbon, early 1940s. The neutral port town is an open door to freedom, for those who are escaping the Nazi occupied France and eastern European countries, and a war field for spies of every description. Lisbon became a cosmopolitan town, where the Duke of Windsor, Primo de Rivera, Pola Negri, Leslie Howard, Walter Schellenberg and Juan Garcia are often together in the luxury hotels and night-clubs. Espionage and crime go hand in hand, despite of, or encouraged by, the Portuguese secret police.

In Mozambique, Izidine, a young police inspector, is called to investigate the murder of Vasto Excelêncio, the director of a nursing home built within the walls of an old colonial slave fortress. He is shocked when all the elderly residents, as well as the head nurse, Marta, confess to the murder. Each one has motive, given Excelêncio’s abusive behavior. With only a week to solve the case, the detective slowly unravels truths about the murder, Mozambique's colonial past, and himself.

A African man lives a difficult life, as so many Africans do. As usual, he catches two buses to go to work, but something unusual happens.

Forest dwellers pound drums upholding rituals while urbanites cry "Progress!" More plunder the land's riches but newly defiant ones shout back.