The Meaning of Life

A deeply moving story about love, loss and literature, this documentary follows the days of José Saramago, the Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, and his wife, Pilar del Río. The film shows their whirlwind life of international travel, his passion for completing his masterpiece "The Elephant's Journey", and how their love quietly sustains them throughout.

The legend of Floripes, is about an enchanted moor of Olhão, in the Algarve. Enchanted moors are one of the cornerstones of Portuguese mythology. They are often seductive and being temptresses, they can offer a powerful reward, but also a terrible curse. Left in Portugal during the Reconquista while her family went back to North Africa, beautiful Floripes was condemned to roam her ancient kingdom in the Algarve until a man could undo her curse. Then she would marry him and give him her fabulous treasure. But if the man fails, she must eat his heart.

Documentary adaptation of the book "Labirinto da Saudade," a deconstruction of the Portuguese ethos from a philosophical and historical point of view, written by Eduardo Lourenço.

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.

A documentary that portrays not only the poet and painter Mario Cesariny but as well his life, his journey and his individuality.

Filmed over seven years, the documentary follows Valter Hugo Mãe as he writes his novel “A Desumanização”, across journeys through Iceland, Brazil, Portugal, Colombia, and Macau. A visual meditation on solitude, loss, and belonging, featuring appearances by cartoonist Laerte Coutinho and Icelandic composer Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, mentor of bands such as Sigur Rós and Björk. The film is part of the project “The Meaning of Life”, which director Miguel Gonçalves Mendes has been developing for more than a decade: a series of nine features built as a kaleidoscope of contemporary figures, in which the filmmaker invites us to reflect on what makes us, as humans, unique beings.

Fernando Lemos, a Portuguese surrealist artist, fled from dictatorship to Brazil in 1952 searching for something better. The movie follows the last moments of his journey and the struggle for the preservation of his legacy, trying to fulfill his last great desire: to be a good dead man.

Cruzeiro Seixas lives in a maze where every path leads to Mário Cesariny. Subdued by that obsessive love and hate relationship, Cruzeiro Seixos did not fully live, but left proofs of that non-existence: 95 years of paintings and poetry that await full recognition alongside other surrealist masters.

During their vacation in Morocco, David suggests to Laura that they visit Vasco, an old friend of his. Laura objects, but David eventually convinces her, leading her on a journey of no return, where they will experience an insane game of jealousy and the realization of a conquest that will prove fatal.

Portuguese director Miguel Gonçalves Mendes and Brazilian writers Tatiana Salem Levy and João Paulo Cuenca travel to the Far East to exchange experiences with artists and thinkers from Macau, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.