The Art of Delusion

A dive, the midday sunlight filtering down through the water. The air in her lungs has to last until she can dislodge the abalone. Dives like these have been carried out in Japan for over 2000 years by the Ama-San.

The National Ballet of Portugal is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Since its foundation, it has aimed to present the great classics, as well as to always welcome contemporary creations. Day-to-day life is demanding for dancers, choreographers, musicians, répétiteurs, seamstresses, light technicians, sound technicians, and other elements of a large staff that make it possible for dance to travel through the rehearsal rooms and linger in the hallways before making it onto the stage. This film follows not only the company’s creations and premieres, but mainly each dancer’s silent and structural work.

Filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos sifts through the memories of her ancestors. Her naval officer grandfather, Henrique, who married her grandmother, Beatriz, on her 21st birthday, spent extended periods at sea, leaving her with six children. This is the beginning of a generational saga.

A 70-year-old man is in a relationship with a young man named Heiko. It is a fetishist relationship taken to extreme exoticism.

Amor Fati seeks out parts that complete each other. These are portraits of couples, friends, families and pets and their owners. They share the intimacy of daily life, habits, beliefs, tastes and even some physical traits. From their faces, from the choreography of their gestures, we unveil the story that binds them.

Ana was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ruled by religion and traditions. Growing up as the middle child of a family of three with her mother and grandmother. Early Ana realized that girls and boys were given different tasks. Through her friendship with Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, Ana questions the world that is promised to her. When her friend Cloé arrives from Canada, bringing with her the glowing days of youth, Ana embarks on a journey that will take her beyond the horizon.

“Campo de Marte” (The Field of Mars) was in the ancient times Rome’s training arena for war. At the outskirts of Lisbon, “Campo” hosts today Europe’s largest military base. In this place military troops train fictional missions, astronomy aficionados observe the stars and a boy plays the piano for the wild deers lurking in the dark.

A portrait of a first relationship, previous to the external world, the one of the family. In a winter in Lisbon, father, mother, son and daughter trace the path of a day by themselves. A film that develops through characters who have for their antagonist life itself, with nothing (and everything) heroic about it.

Elliot Tittensor (TV's Shameless) stars as Daz in headlining film PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT, a gripping British film debut that sees him woo a young lad in an underpass, only to be threatened with a break-up the following morning. Passive and submissive roles are tackled and tugged in gay graffiti tale VANDALS and Icelandic grapple-fest WRESTLING, while POSTMORTEM, MY NAME IS LOVE, and Iris Prize-winner STEAM look at promising encounters that turn awry. Rounding out the collection are HEIKO, an alternative ode to foot fetishes, BREATH where 12-year-old Erik swims out to sea to make a daring move on his best friend's father, and the crème de la crème from this collection TREVOR, which won multiple prestigious awards from Sundance, Berlinale, and even The Academy Awards (Oscar) for Best Short Film.

On a summer's day, a mother, daughter and granddaughter's care-free day trip comes to an abrupt end. Beautiful and restrained.

Kora outlines the stories of refugee women living in Portugal. They all carry their past with them, in their body and words, as well as in pictures of their loved ones. From these memories, we access the intimate and political gaze of those who reconstruct (their) present.

The Ø island is composed of several landscapes within a single landscape. They are territories lived and shaped by interior and exterior time. There are no privatized territories on this island. They are landscapes that cannot be accommodated: they expand through encounters, clashes, pressures and frictions. Between silence and intimacy, new islands are sculpted, in a possible encounter between life and death.

A digressive quest, through conversations with various people, about the need humanity has always had to tell stories about itself, about the power and enchantment of fiction.

On April 25, 1975, the first free elections were held in Portugal. The adult population exercised their right to vote democratically for the first time. Around 92% of registered voters went to the polls, a turnout rate that has never been surpassed to this day. Election night was held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, while the vote count was broadcast live on television. This film revisits the elections through the images produced during that night and the testimonies of those who lived through this historic moment.

An essay about disaffection in 7 segments inspired by Stendhal's seven stages of love, "De L'Amour" (1822). Most people are afraid of love because they are afraid of their deepest joy, delight and inner freedom.