Cláudia Tomaz

Francisco just got out of prison after a six year sentence and is now a free man. He wants to change, and after a few days sleeping in the subway tunnels, and some small jobs, he finally gets a room on a cheap hotel. He changes his looks, gets a job, lives his life.

Carolina, an aging local grande dame who works at a crossing point on the titular river, marries another late-in-life character, the dredging-boat operator Antonio. Not long after their union, she becomes intensely jealous of Antonio's fondness for their winsome goddaughter, Joana, and insinuates herself into a relationship brewing between Joana and a mystical gypsy gold salesman. Soon, tempers are flaring, mystical secrets are being revealed and death is hovering over the central characters.

The pain, the weakness, the silence, the despair. These are some of the feelings faced by a couple lost in drugs. Nights can be seen as the story of people who made mistakes in life, but who still continue to seek happiness. It is about the despair of hopeless lives. The characters are, from the beginning, thrown into an empty and sterile world of indifference. In this true no-man's-land, João and Teresa are confronted with their precarious existence. They are broken pillars of a love that has become silent and painful, they share everything: the house, the drugs, the emptiness and the deprivations of their lives. To make the situation even more dramatic, Teresa falls ill. João does everything to help her, betting on his love for her. He, too, an addict, knows how to ease the pain of his beloved. But unfortunately this help also requires extra money, which forces João to prostitute himself, accelerating his process of destruction and his path to a tragic end.

Documentary on Portuguese artist Albuquerque Mendes, his work process and preparations on his 2002 Serralves exhibition titled "Confesso".