Production
T. S. Eliot ends one of his most famous poems, "The Hollow Men", by repeating three times the sentence "This is how the world ends" - and then adding: "Not with a bang but a whimper."
Maria Ana’s body began to disappear. Having dedicated all her life to restoring ancient paintings, Maria Ana is now faced with the impossibility of restoring her own body. Her cancer weighs heavily on her husband and children. On New Year's Eve, Maria Ana and Death meet for the first time. And from that day on, they establish an unusual friendship. There seems to be no one else that could appease Maria Ana’s concern: How to die well?
Daughter of two worlds, the one that the English parents left behind and the Portuguese land of her upbringing that still calls her a foreigner, Ruby moves between the borders of both, without belonging to either.
Since 2015, the Landless Workers Movement has been occupying an indebted sugarcane factory's land to press for its redistribution through land reform. Grandma, P.C. and their encamped fellows struggle to conquer a small share of land where they can settle down and live a self-sustainable life, growing agro-ecological crops in a newly knit peasant community they draw in their dreams.
Márcia is a social media pro and knows all the best poses and filters for perfect selfies. Her son Flávio helps her to take photos of herself. This is how she manages to hook up with famous rapper Da Reel Chullz on Instagram. She is not about to turn him down when he asks her out on a date – even if no one can be found to look after Flávio. A refreshing portrait of a single mother who knows how to work things out.
There is a long night when Hugo, a civil servant, is sitting on the stairs of the Ministry where he works. He can’t face going home. The images of the mysterious 8 mm films he found in António’s house after he passed away keep coming back to his mind. Hugo remembers the day when Antonio, his superior at the Ministry, told him that he was going to die. Indirectly, Antonio seemed to want to tell him something about Hugo himself. Hugo’s desire to understand what had remained unsaid between the two of them, triggers other memories from the past. Hugo unexpectedly thinks back on the last time he saw the woman he loved, Adriana, and relives once more what he feels has been his unlived life.
In the wake of a dream, João Vieira Torres sets off to find the children that his grandmother Aurora, a midwife, helped deliver. Through encounters with the living and the dead, he uncovers tragic destinies which reflect a structural history of violence against women. A curse dispelled by the means of cinema, resulting in a film of exceptionally rare beauty.
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.
Ana is spending the holidays with her family. The setting is perfect for relaxation and for wondering. Next to the house, workers are building a pond. Attracted by it, Ana senses a presence, someone familiar yet still unknown. Alexander David captures on screen all the beauty of a childhood self-discovery and the first uncertain steps taken outside of parental control. Evocative and mellow, Water Hazard explores queer identity with a delicate and empathetic eye.
Beneath the harvest sun and the cicada song, Mónica Martins Nunes builds a touching portrait of Serra de Serpa, an arid region in the south of Portugal affected by rural exodus. The poems sung by the shepherds and market traders resonate like the last gesture of a human landscape which resists sinking into oblivion.
From archival images, an improbable story is woven of a boy who couldn't stop crying, creating both floods and paradises.
On a secluded island lives an autonomous community of children who don’t speak, communicating only in gestures. Guided by the eldest among them, they operate like an agrarian commune with strict rules and beliefs. Adults are banished into the surrounding woods, and every year, the oldest member of the village is sent to jump off a cliff – a ceremony that is believed to bestow eternal youth on the chosen one. This way of life is threatened when one adventurous child heeds the call of the forbidden forest.
Wayward boy punishes his mother’s lover. Beauty and horror fondle each other. Young gods callously abjure conventional morality. Death goes whoring in child’s guise.
In one of the last rural schools on the border between Galicia and Portugal, Mariana, a four-year-old girl, discovers the world through the stories and legends told by her teacher. As Mariana grows, these tales and the passage of time shape her view of the world, until at eighteen, she faces a crucial decision: to leave her village or remain in this borderland by her mother’s side.
Sprout. In the vacant lots against the hammering of buildings always under construction, between walls of granite, cement and sheet metal with rust, moss and cats; on the hillside between the train and the river, next to the traffic on the highway, facing the subway, vegetable gardens sprout. In this city, the choreography of ancient gestures of cultivating the land is repeated day after day, without fail. Sowing, digging, harvesting, watering, eating, talking, resting and returning the next day. The longest day of the year brings S. João and nobody goes to bed, but when the sun rises, the discreet gestures of resistance will restart.
A headlong dive into the deepest, silliest recesses of Abrantes’s unconscious.
Based on one of the short stories from the "Decameron", "The Convent Gardener" mirrors the story of Young Gardener Masetto and presents, in two separate parts, the story of a young man and a young woman who pretend to be mute in order to get a job as a gardener in a convent inhabited by several women and several men, respectively. Because the young gardeners are mute and, therefore, assumably unable to reveal the secrets of the convent’s residents, all the women living there take action to sleep with the young man just as all the men do to sleep with the young woman.
In summer, the Portuguese countryside is ravaged by fires. Otilia struggles between her job as a pool cleaner and the need to take care of her mother alone. Stunned by this suffocating daily life, the flames awaken in her solitude, despair and the desire to escape.
Portugal. 15th century. Monks build a wall around a forest to bar the entry of women. But in the world of the unseen, lit by their souls, women have made their kingdom of invisibility without walls.
In an ominous Lisbon courtyard where the last executioner of the kingdom once lived, an accident is waiting to happen. After a patient game of who's observing who, four characters will collide with dire consequences. Inspired by the novel The Damned Yard by Nobel Prize-winning Bosnian writer Ivo Andrić, this is a masterclass in slow cinema, a pure 16mm cinematic pleasure by André Gil Mata.
