Patrick Mendes

Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.

Sofia lives a strangely isolated life in the old apartment where she grew up in Lisbon. Mariama arrives from Guinea-Bissau, having been hired by Sofia’s mother to help take care of the house and her son. The appearance of Bobô, Mariama’s younger sister, awakens in Sofia the desire to take a stand. The forced cohabitation between Sofia and Mariama forces them to confront their own private ghosts.

In 1917 Burma (now Myanmar), a British diplomat is set to marry his fiancée, but after a sudden panic, escapes to Singapore, sending her on what evolves into a chase across Asia.

The story of an ambulant sharpener who crosses spaces in a (almost) lifeless country.

Crista, Carloto and João are building an airy greenhouse for butterflies in the garden. The three of them share household routines, day after day… And they are not the only ones.

Lisbon, Portugal, 1927. The writer and journalist Fernando Pessoa accepts from his boss the commission to create an advertising slogan for the drink Coca-Louca; but conservative government authorities consider the new drink as revolutionary as it is diabolical.

Thirty-something Vítor still lives with his mother, Fátima, in his grandmother Júlia’s apartment. Fátima is a hairdresser with a quiet disposition who, at night, fantasises about the policeman who has just moved in next door. By day, Vítor is a lowly employee on a TV show. But at night, he dons his neighbour’s uniform to win the favour and satisfy the desires of a boy he’s met online. In her retirement home, Júlia is unable to sleep at night and has long forgotten what drugs she is meant to be taking. She misses her dead husband, who manifests himself in the body of a living friend, and gets involved in her daily activities. Through these characters, Diogo Costa Amarante constructs a fascinating portrait of lives lived while desires remain unrealised.

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

A father's journey to save his son.

An American writer visits the old Portuguese town of Guimarães for a lecture on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. What would seem like a nice little trip goes terrible wrong when his own paranoia takes over the events that follow... or maybe not.

Somewhere in an unspecified time, Patrick Mendes presents an initiation ritual in a community at the ends of the earth.

A dehydrated man trespasses an estate and ends up by losing his freedom.

After fourteen years away from her homeland, Salomé is forced to return to Cape Verde to see her dying brother. During her stopover at Lisbon airport, Águeda, a cleaning lady, recognizes Salomé as "Mila", her childhood friend. Águeda invites Salomé to leave the airport and spend the stopover at her home, with the women of her family. The neighborhood transports her on a spiritual journey, whose destination reveals a painful bond with her homeland.

Mata-Ratos, a legendary Portuguese punk band, have played in football stadiums, sports halls, bars, performance venues, cultural associations, nightclubs, bandstands, parties and garages. They now celebrate their fortieth anniversary and director Patrick Mendes joins them once again as they tour the country. We find them at Fundão, within the sweaty walls of Octógono, in a concert full of distortion, beer and mosh pits.

Essay House of Fun, is a journey to create the dramatic reading of the feature script HOUSE OF FUN, from the gender transition in the context of the 1990s, and the challenges of producing an audiovisual work in a short space-time.

In an automated world, an old factory feeds on its own work force.

A girl after being exposed to a work of art, enters a psychotic hallucination caused by Stendhal syndrome.