Nuno Rodrigues

'In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the belongings of each guest of the hotel and observed through the details, lives that will remain unknown', says the temporary Chambermaid in a large seaside hotel, which, unable to communicate, lives through a rigid methodology of analysis of the exterior and a ritualised quotidian. Until the uncontrollable comes to disrupts this dynamic. Hotel Royal is fragmented and incomplete mosaic of contemporary societies. It could be dubbed a film about the horrors of the soul, about voyeurs or simply about misfits.

A boy from Vila do Conde records a love letter on a cassette. His voice blends with music, archive images and stories from the past, some lived and others heard.

An instant in the memory of landscape: the smuggling that for centuries crossed the line between Portugal and Galicia. The Gerês Mountains knows no borders, and rocks cross from one country to another with insolence. Smugglers also disobey this separation. The rocks, the river, the trees: silent witnesses that help them to hide. They just have to wait for the night to cross the distance that separates them.

A simple Portuguese-Brazilian song. Fernando spends his time in Porto in the neighborhood of Fontainhas between a small house and a local café. A parrot reaches him from Brazil, which evokes paradise in his imagination. This gives rise to a Portuguese-Brazilian correspondence. A game of mirrorings develops over the exchange of letters between the two friends, in which ideas of each other’s country are reflected.

The stories, adventures and misadventures of Alfredinho Rocha, a fado singer, a Karate fighter, a former drug dealer, an owner of a cafe in Fontainhas, Oporto, a nutter, a dancer, a nightingale and a whole family.

Alberto is 40 years old and lives with his mother in an apartment complex where he works as a concierge. One day, a circus group settles near Alberto’s residence, disturbing his everyday life and awakening his forgotten desire for independence and freedom.

Aimed at generating a revolution in perceptual habits, Semente Exterminadora approaches Indigenous knowledge as a radical means of reconceiving the relationship between humans and their environment in the twenty-first century.