Mário Castanheira

Tiago, a tour guide with a broken heart leads Karen, a grieving and aging Brazilian woman, around a Lisbon of strange suicidal heroes. Tiago lives with his father, Raul, an old sailor haunted by historical defeats, and with his son, Manuel, a teenager fantasising of a solitary, but erotic, trip to the cosmos. All together, they take Karen through dreams, lost glories, and catastrophes to meet a fallen hero who disappeared many centuries ago on an island in the South Atlantic Ocean.

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.

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.

The start of Luís Rovisco’s old age isn’t exactly cheerful. Already in his sixties, he’s still roaming the country by himself, carrying out his tasks — increasingly less real — as sales director for the company SegurVale. Sadness, resignation? Not with the songs Luís makes up behind the wheel, and that take over this film from start to finish.

Rute is a teenager like so many others: she goes to school, she has swimming lessons, she likes watching films and specially she loves to be online. Rute is almost always on her phone or using her computer. But Rute has a secret nobody knows: Rute is receiving hateful and violent messages. Who is sending these messages? Sara F.

A writer becomes the main character in the story he intended to write

The journey of 11 women while they go on a pilgrimage from Bragança to Fatima.

The film follows the adventures of a bride and her family on the verge of a nervous breakdown on her wedding day.

Rita is fifteen and spends the summer between warm afternoons of teenage love and party nights with her friend Sara. From Portugal to the South Pacific, the pleasures of this routine will take a turn when the young girl visits the art show of a new neighbor in the local community.

Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells king Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. These are stories based on whatever will be happening in Portugal during the production time of the film. As in the book, these stories will be tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events. This film will be about the reality of a disgraced country, Portugal, under the effects of a global economic crisis.

In an abandoned prison complex, without any basic conditions, a man survives like a wild animal. When his security and tranquility are threatened, he resorts to violence to defend his home. Later, confined to a small room without access to the outside world, he longs to return to his cell where he feels safe and free.

Tiago is a final-year secondary school student who has failed to graduate twice. Despite praying to the divine, he will fail once again. Between lying to his benevolent mother and giving in to the temptation of a school trip with his girlfriend, Tiago is faced with making decisions. Tiago may not be a lost case.

A princess and a hunter. An iconographic journey immersed in Lusitanian fantasy.

This film is an attempt to disclose if Raul Brandão has left any trace, in Nespereira, Gumarães.

A regular family living in the outskirts of Lisbon sees the serenity of their lives shaken beyond any remedy within a week.

A couple watches a bank robbery live on TV.

João is an indolent young man, whose life is desperately empty. Day after day he goes through the motions of duplicating keys in his tiny shop concealed in the basement of an obsolete nearly deserted shopping center. Some day, he hopes, the lady of his heart will come and order the key that will unlock his heart. Against all expectation, the miracle happens...

In oPorto there is a club, Imperatriz, where everything is permitted. A moment in which all intersect in the dark night.

Lúcia is misbegotten, unloved and the eternal widow of her own father. A cry of rage in bodily form, she is mad, maltreated and humbled. She wears mourning in remembrance of her mothers crime and betrayal, and gives vent to her inconsolable pain to make sure theres no rest or respite for the killers of her father. She lives in hope of her brothers return so she can fulfil her promise of avenging her fathers blood.

A moment in the life of a grievieng mother with the identity crisis of her teenage daughter. The mother insists on wanting to understand what she only should accept, the daughter can not explain what should be accepted.

After finishing his MA in Anthropology, Hugo spends his days giving his brain a rest from the endless reading of texts by unknown authors. His only company is Luisa, the cleaning lady, with whom he plays cat and mouse. To escape the sleep of reason – which creates monsters -, Hugo exercises his lyrical vein by writing, with his friend Manuel, songs about their neighbourhood. The quiet dilettantism of our protagonist is shaken by Catarina, a young and beautiful translator who’s starting her professional life as a freelancer. Hugo is hooked and wavers. High above, a kestrel falcon hovers. It’s not the only bird of prey that can do it.

O Crime do Padre Amaro ("The Crime of Father Amaro") is a novel by the 19th-century Portuguese writer José Maria de Eça de Queiroz. It was first published in 1875 to great controversy.

A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.

During one winter night, a Portuguese teenager, Alvaro, loses his life in a fight between a youth gang and the cops in a suburb of Paris. Cidalia, a 36 year old cleaning woman, his mother, decides to defy the code of silence of the Portuguese community and tries to find the truth. She losses her friends, her job and her family but gains a life.

A touching and tragic real life story about a group of Portuguese fishermen who get caught in the middle of a storm in the Tejo river (Lisbon) and struggle to survive.

In today's Alentejo, a story of love and death based in a real criminal case.

A blind beggar is robbed of his chest of money. The theft leads to a dramatic situation in the street where he begs every day.

This odd film is a major representative of an even odder film genre: direct-to-celluloid opera. It was commissioned by the Portuguese master of style, director Manoel de Oliveira from composer João Paes. Musically, it ranges from 19th-century romanticism to popular, modernist and even "post-modernist" styles. In the initially tame story, a host-narrator tells the story of a wedding between the two lovebirds: Viscount d'Aveleda and the beautiful Marguerite. However, what happens in the bridal chamber is incredibly bizarre. The events after that are even stranger (the film out-does even Luis Buñuel in that department), and the wedding guests and family indulge in cannibalism, among other perversions.

Jim is a small child who lives in an inn run by his parents. The arrival of a strange captain to the Island they live will trouble his existence and tip him into an universe of adventures.

A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.

Fed up with the sea, Paul, a Swiss mechanic working in the noisy bowels of a merchant ship, lands in Lisbon.