Critter

West, end of the summer. Laura works at the pear harvesting, a family business. During the afternoon, Carol arrives at the village to spend a few vacation days with her friends. That night, when Laura catches them stealing pears from one of her father’s orchards, her friend confronts her about her true intent.

On one side of the Tagus river, Clara just moved to her new apartment. On the other side, a man wanders the night. As time unfolds both margins slowly merge, and what seems left behind in the past can always be waiting in the future.

A contemporary reinterpretation of the tradition of pilgrimages in the Azores, historically carried out exclusively by men. In the film, a group of women make a pilgrimage to the island of Pico; along the way, one of them disappears, raising questions about their individual and collective existence as female bodies. These are bodies that literally walk to break the bubble of passivity, guided by action, ritual and resistance.

Nina must return to her home country after two years of living abroad. On the eve of the flight, she has a dinner with friends, during which stories are told of this group of foreigners in the new country. The next morning, on the day of the trip, Nina experiences a nightmare.

When contractors in Rio de Janeiro dig too deep, they awake Murphy, who was burried alive many years ago. Now, his ghost wanders the streets of the Marvellous City.

A young man sits on a busy street in Lisbon to draw the people passing by. Not too distant, a couple talks about the origin of a wallet found months earlier. The light of one moment is reflected on the other.

From the encounter between Maria Clara, the filmmaker, and Gil, the character, not only cities but entire cinematic possibilities explode. Dreams and desires collide with the harshness of reality, giving form – through art – to the dilemmas of collective human existence. As in her acclaimed debut feature, “Os Dias Com Ele,” Maria Clara Escobar starts from her immediate surroundings and amplifies the scope of her camera, this time telling a story of women and the passage of time in a country that offers little mercy to either.