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This is the story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a man of conviction who saved 30,000 lives during WWII, in June 1940. Among them were10,000 Jews. As the Portuguese General Consul stationed in Bordeaux, France, he issued 30,000 visas for safe passage to Portugal. He defied the direct orders of his government and exhibited courage, moral rectitude, unselfishness, and self-sacrifice by issuing visas to all refugees regardless of nationality, race, religion or political opinions.This narrative film expresses his heroic actions towards humanity, which will perpetuate his legacy of justice for a new generation. In 1966, Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations. He is considered to have achieved the largest single rescue operation of World War II.
The film is liberally inspired by the period when Eça de Queiroz was Portuguese Consul in Cuba, when still a Spanish colony. Eça de Queiroz struggles against local authorities in his defense of Chinese workers, brought to the sugar plantations by greedy middlemen and exploited as slaves. Two parallel stories unfold, that of a Chinese girl which Eça de Queiroz saves from the clutches of one of the island’s most powerful slave owners, and the other of a romance involving a young American woman on holidays in Havana.
In an isolated village of the Alentejo region, a conflict arises. José Vitorino, one of the landowners of the region, rich in prehistoric monuments, wants to build a luxurious solarium in lands filled with ancient rocks, places of devotion and sacred rituals. Indifferent to the people’s protest, who believe in the magical powers of the stones and that the region’s drought is due to the rocks’ destruction, José Vitorino hires an architect to plan his new house. On christmas eve, in the middle of the winter solstice, a strange ceremony around a dolmen, once an altar for bloody sacrifices in more remote times, releases a harmful spell. A race against time to reverse the faulty charm begins.
After a violent civil war, D. Miguel, the last Portuguese absolutist king, is defeated by the liberals, led by his brother D. Pedro. In 1834 D. Miguel left for exile. His supporters don't give up on returning him to the throne. Willing to do anything they even try to use the slaves of the colonies. A mysterious emissary is sent to Cape Verde to prepare an uprising. But other reasons were behind his visit to the archipelago ....
The story about the last man to be sentenced to death in Portugal.
Somewhere on top of a mountain, there is a miraculous cave: it is the PARIDEIRA. Tells the legend that if an infertile woman enters there, she becomes pregnant out of the cave. But for that to happen, an adult must die within that night.
