Zé Branco

Movies

The Child
Decorator
The story takes place near Lisbon, in the mid-16th century. Bela, an adopted young man, tries to find his place in a family that is free, but trapped in a world where each shadow allows imperfections to shine through.
How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal
Tram Passenger #1
Lisbon, Portugal, 1927. The writer and journalist Fernando Pessoa accepts from his boss the commission to create an advertising slogan for the drink Coca-Louca; but conservative government authorities consider the new drink as revolutionary as it is diabolical.
How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal
Production Design
Lisbon, Portugal, 1927. The writer and journalist Fernando Pessoa accepts from his boss the commission to create an advertising slogan for the drink Coca-Louca; but conservative government authorities consider the new drink as revolutionary as it is diabolical.
Sea
Art Direction
Francisca, a beautiful 50-year-old widow (played by Maria de Medeiros), prepared a peaceful future for herself. In an unexpected outburst, she grabs an opportunity for change and embarks on a sailboat called ‘Hovering Over the Water’.
At an Uncertain Time
Production Design
It’s 1942, and Portugal languishes under dictatorship and WWII rages just beyond its borders. Secrets, half-truths, and mistrust prevail in the state security office of chief inspector Varga, who makes professional privilege a cover for his unprofessional interest in a boldly carnal refugee and her alleged brother. Director/writer Saboga (screenwriter for Raúl Ruiz’s MYSTERIES OF LISBON) saturates the dark world of this predatory tale with steamy eroticism and paranoia, starting with the incestuous desires of his bi-curious adolescent daughter and including the family maid.
Operation Autumn
Art Direction
A film about General Humberto Delgado's brutal assassination by the Portuguese fascist police in 1965.
Cisne
Production Design
Vera is a singer in her thirties; she is back in Lisbon for the final performance of her concert tour. The heat and beauty of Lisbon makes one want to be happy. Pablo, the companion she selected from among the many who answered her questionnaire, helps her through the sleepless nights. He has no family, but wishes he had. Vera concerns herself with the mysteries surrounding Pablo's life. Vera is not afraid of the night; she is not afraid of anything.
Twist of Fate
Art Direction
Carlos is a famous journalist at the age of 55. His wife, Ada, is the opposite of her husband, a woman with a very active social life, and she is happy and seductive. One day, Carlos accidentally opens a text message on Ada’s cellular telephone. A new world reveals itself before his eyes when he discovers that his wife is seeing another man. With the help of his friend with whom he goes to live, Carlos discovers a universe of virtual lovers and electronic adultery.
The Portuguese Nun
Production Design
A young French actress in Lisbon to shoot a movie is intrigued by a nun she sees kneeling in the chapel where she is filming.
The Lovebirds
Production Design
THE LOVEBIRDS intertwines six stories about love, friendship and survival. The film stars an international cast of American and Portuguese actors who create a colorful mix of off-beat characters that lead us through a complex labyrinth of emotions. Set in the old Romanesque city of Lisbon during the course of one night where love is the art of survival. Written by Anonymous
The Lovebirds
Costume Design
THE LOVEBIRDS intertwines six stories about love, friendship and survival. The film stars an international cast of American and Portuguese actors who create a colorful mix of off-beat characters that lead us through a complex labyrinth of emotions. Set in the old Romanesque city of Lisbon during the course of one night where love is the art of survival. Written by Anonymous
The Inner Life of Martin Frost
Production Design
A writer awakens one day to find a strange but beautiful woman in bed with him. He quickly falls in love with her, thinking he has found his muse, but as time passes she becomes more and more unattainable.
Private Life
Art Direction
After Him
Decorator
When Camille's son was killed in a car accident, the devastating loss proved too much for emotionally fragile mother to bear. Now desperately clinging to any reminder of the son she held so close to her heart, Camille becomes increasingly fixated on Frank - the young man who was not only her child's best friend, but the one who was responsible for the tragic accident that took his life as well. At first, Frank is receptive to Camille's advances. It's not long, however, before the pair's scandalous relationship prompts many of Camille's friends to distance themselves from the increasingly unstable woman. Later, as Camille's obsession with Frank turns menacing, the relationship between grief-stricken mother and her guilt-ridden lover begins to take on ominous undertones.
Trance
Production Design
Sonia, a girl from St Petersburg, decides to seek a better life in western Europe. She first gets a job at a car dealer in Germany. But she is suddenly kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. She will be dragged from country to country and resistance will only bring her misery and humiliation.
98 Octanas
Costume Design
He and she don't know each other. They randomly meet at a gas station, while drifting. "Where are we going? Far away. Where is that? Near."
98 Octanas
Production Design
He and she don't know each other. They randomly meet at a gas station, while drifting. "Where are we going? Far away. Where is that? Near."
In the Darkness of the Night
Costume Design
A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.
In the Darkness of the Night
Production Design
A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.
The Fifth Empire
Production Design
Manoel de Oliveira directs José Régio's historical epic of religious and political power struggles. King Sebastião plans to make Portugal the world's Fifth Empire.
Outside
Costume Design
Laura works as a newscaster and José Maria as a stockbroker, and while they live in the same housing complex, their lives never cross directly. Nevertheless, he watches her from a distance, seeing all her movements without her knowledge. But their lives finally meet when he is invited onto her news program. From there, a romance begins which coincides with the desire of two beings who finally find a reason to seek love once again.
Outside
Art Direction
Laura works as a newscaster and José Maria as a stockbroker, and while they live in the same housing complex, their lives never cross directly. Nevertheless, he watches her from a distance, seeing all her movements without her knowledge. But their lives finally meet when he is invited onto her news program. From there, a romance begins which coincides with the desire of two beings who finally find a reason to seek love once again.
Changing Times
Production Design
In Tangiers where he traveled for his work, a man finds the woman he loved, and attempts to revive their romance though it ended some 30 years earlier.
A Talking Picture
Production Design
A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.
Under Another Sky
Production Design
Samy, a young Franco-Algerian, hits a policeman at a roadblock and must flee France. He takes refuge with his grandfather in Algeria. But he does not speak the local language, and everything is strange to him, even members of his family: Nadia his cousin, a pregnant widow; and Qu'Issam another cousin, who was expelled from France, and hates everything French. Samy's grandfather lives in the memory of a piece of land that no longer produces any wealth. Samy will never give the reason for his presence, but the chaotic climate of the country will revive the chaos that is in him.
The Uncertainty Principle
Production Design
Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family.
O Delfim
Art Direction
A wealthy landowner, "The Dauphin," enjoys a decadent life of hunting, drinking, and womanizing. He oversees his estate, the Laguna, with his barren wife, his one-armed manservant, and his treasured guard dog. When a sportsman (the film’s narrator) comes to the estate for his annual duck-hunting excursion, he discovers the body of the landowner’s wife floating in the lagoon and the manservant dead on his master’s bed. The Dauphin and his dog are nowhere to be found except for the mysterious barking sounds heard over the lagoon.
Far Away
Costume Design
Serge is a long distance lorry driver between Morocco andEurope. In Tangier, he tries to reconcile with his former girlfriend, Sarah. She has refused to have anything to do with him since her mother’s death and intends to join her brother in Canada. Serge appeals to Sarah’s protector, a young Arab named Saïd, to allow him to meet up with Sarah, promising in return to smuggle Saïd into Europe...
Far Away
Production Design
Serge is a long distance lorry driver between Morocco andEurope. In Tangier, he tries to reconcile with his former girlfriend, Sarah. She has refused to have anything to do with him since her mother’s death and intends to join her brother in Canada. Serge appeals to Sarah’s protector, a young Arab named Saïd, to allow him to meet up with Sarah, promising in return to smuggle Saïd into Europe...
Bad
Production Design
Concerns an Irish woman, Cathy (Pauline Cadell), who dearly loves her Portuguese lawyer husband, Pedro (Rui Morisson); however, unbeknownst to her, he engages in one tryst after another. Cathy soon finds herself trying to help a young delinquent get off heroin, while the youth's desperate mother joins a weird religious cult. In other segments, an elderly man is nearly driven mad with grief at the loss of his granddaughter in a train station, while a down-and-out jeweler ushers the young girl to a hotel room.
Trois ponts sur la rivière
Decorator
Arthur is a history teacher who lives alone in Paris after having broken up with Claire. He is a sensitive man, full of existential doubts and questions. He has to go to Lisbon to meet an eminent historian whose work is the subject of his thesis. Having just made up with Claire, he decides to take her along. She's an ideal travel companion and it seems their relationship has not yet exhausted its potential. But moving from Lisbon to Oporto, their fantasy of a second honeymoon clashes with the reality of a world on the verge of a nightmare.
Alice and Martin
Production Design
Twenty-year-old Martin seems to be living the dream. After moving from the French countryside to Paris, he quickly found professional success as a fashion model and romantic fulfillment in dating his half-brother's fiery roommate, Alice. Deep down, however, he is avoiding inner turmoil that stems from his tumultuous upbringing. But when Alice becomes unexpectedly pregnant, the full force of his repression is let loose, wreaking havoc on his life.
Ossos
Production Design
After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live.
Transatlantique
Decorator
In this French-Portuguese film -- directed by Jacques Rivette's screenplay collaborator Christine Laurent -- French vocalist Laure Constant (Laurence Cote) goes to Montevideo, Uruguay, to see her old lover Colossus (Jose Olivera), but when he's a no-show, she becomes involved with several other men, while listening to advice from some older French women who are costume designers. Shown at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival.
Voyage to the Beginning of the World
Production Design
Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.
Thieves
Set Decoration
In the middle of the night, someone brings Ivan's body home to his wife and his sad-faced, jug-eared son. Through flashbacks, the film discloses the relationships among Ivan and his brother Alex, a cop with a cleanliness fetish; siblings Juliette and Jimmy, Ivan's partners in a seedy nightclub; the love triangle of Alex, Juliette, and Marie, a professor of philosophy; and of Alex and his nephew, Ivan's dour, stoic son. Ivan's death changes every relationship.
Party
Production Design
This French language drama from Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira takes an ironic look at the pretentiousness of international jet-setters while simultaneously examining an obsessive romantic relationship between an aging Lothario and a beautiful married woman. The tale begins at a garden party in a lovely villa in the Azores held by Rogerio and Leonor for handsome, middle-aged Michel and his mistress Irene, a noted Greek movie star. The guests aren't there long before an obvious attraction between Leonor and Michel prompts them to head for a private beach (their tryst, if there was one, occurs off-camera). Five years later, the foursome again meet for a garden party and once again they pair off after spending much time discussing gender differences, emotion, social insight and exchanging witty bon mots.
O Convento
Production Design
The journey of Michael Padovic, an American professor who arrives with his wife, Helene, at a Portuguese convent where he expects to find the documents needed to prove his theory: Shakespeare was born in Spain; not in England.
Casa de Lava
Production Design
The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.
Lisbon Story
Art Direction
Lisbon Story is Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.
Abraham's Valley
Art Direction
Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. Young marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, a father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the Valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. With time she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a lover.
Abraham's Valley
Production Design
Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. Young marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, a father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the Valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. With time she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a lover.
Day of Despair
Production Design
Portrait of the last days of the life of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.
The Divine Comedy
Production Design
In a mental institution the patients see themselves as people like Jesus, Lázaro, Marta, Maria, Adão, Eve, Sonia, Raskolnikov, Aliosha e Ivan Karamasov, a Philosopher, a Profet, Santa Teresa d'Avila, reciting the Divine Comedy.
Until the End of the World
Set Decoration
In 1999, Claire's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash with two bank robbers, who enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris. On the way she runs into another fugitive from the law — Dr. Sam Farber, an American who is being chased by the CIA. They want to confiscate a device his father invented which allows anyone to record their dreams and visions. On the run they travel the globe from Berlin to Lisbon to Moscow to Tokyo, ending up in Australia at his father's research facility, where they hope to play back the recordings Farber captured for his blind mother.
No, or the Vain Glory of Command
Production Design
Episodes from entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a professorish soldier recounts them while marching through a Portuguese African colony in 1973.
Lovely Child
Production Design
Maria is a sweet child. She hasn’t father and doesn’t like her mother. She has a boyfriend, A bandit who would like to change his class.
The King's Trial
Production Design
At the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro. Portugal's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.
Three Less Me
Costume Design
A young woman, working as sales-girl at a shopping center's music shop, wants someone with whom to share her secrets. A distant mother separating from her father, an aunt who emigrated to France, and her pre-adolescent sister, can't do - neither the boyfriend. Such a confident arrives unexpectedly - but then there are three of them, one too much. One leaves, but then another young man arrives, and there are three again. One must go. A sad young adult love story, told in the first person, singular - and ultimately alone, under the rain.
Three Less Me
Art Direction
A young woman, working as sales-girl at a shopping center's music shop, wants someone with whom to share her secrets. A distant mother separating from her father, an aunt who emigrated to France, and her pre-adolescent sister, can't do - neither the boyfriend. Such a confident arrives unexpectedly - but then there are three of them, one too much. One leaves, but then another young man arrives, and there are three again. One must go. A sad young adult love story, told in the first person, singular - and ultimately alone, under the rain.
The Innocents
Production Design
A woman becomes trapped in the middle of a feud between two men while attempting to free her younger brother from a life of petty crime.
My Case
Production Design
Manoel de Oliveira plays his film in three stages: the first part - a play, the second can be roughly defined as a silent film (with the behind the scenes read excerpts from Beckett works), but in the end the director brilliantly performs the same material of the avant-garde exercise. Surprisingly, a joke, repeated three times, each time everything sounds fresh and develops into an almost verbatim adaptation of the biblical "Book of Job" - a spectacular point in a parable about how hard to empathize with other people's misery, when you have your own.
Treasure Island
Production Design
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.
The Satin Slipper
Production Design
During the century of the Spanish Gold, Doña Prouhèze, wife of a nobleman, deeply loves Don Rodrigo, who is forced to leave Spain and go to America. Meanwhile Prouhèze is sent to Africa to rule the city of Mogador. Ten years later Rodrigo leaves America and travels to Africa in search of Prouhèze to find out that she died and eventually meeting her daughter.
Manoel's Destinies
Costume Design
When the child Manuel wanders into a garden that is off-limits to him, he meets an unidentified fisherman, and another boy -- the boy is actually himself several years down the road. Manuel experiences three different versions of his encounters in the garden, revealing that fate can have several twists and turns in one's life, depending on decisions that are made early on.
Manoel's Destinies
Production Design
When the child Manuel wanders into a garden that is off-limits to him, he meets an unidentified fisherman, and another boy -- the boy is actually himself several years down the road. Manuel experiences three different versions of his encounters in the garden, revealing that fate can have several twists and turns in one's life, depending on decisions that are made early on.
Vanishing Point
Costume Design
An island retreat. A man, his face bandaged, plays cards nonchalantly. His ex-wife arrives. Conversations happen. (Mubi)
Vanishing Point
Production Design
An island retreat. A man, his face bandaged, plays cards nonchalantly. His ex-wife arrives. Conversations happen. (Mubi)
City of Pirates
Costume Design
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.
City of Pirates
Production Design
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.
Cheaters
Production Design
Swaying between pleasure and despair, Elric throws himself into his pathological passion for the casino. Meeting Suzie could have saved him, but the young woman also sinks into gambling hell. The couple then start getting involved in the fearsome world of professional cheaters.
Aspern
Costume Design
A publisher seeks information on a writer who died long ago.
The State of Things
Set Designer
On location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger Corman's The Day the World Ended (1956) . The producer is nowhere to be found and director Munro attempts to find him in hopes of being able to finish the film.
A Estrangeira
Production Design
The shady side of an Italian textile trade in northern Germany is the subject of this slow-paced but atmospheric drama featuring Alberto Sordi as Totonno, a low-level, petty criminal anxious to move up a somewhat crooked ladder. Rising to the rank of the "dons" -- Don Raffaele (Carmine Ippolito) or Don Gennaro (Pasquale Cenammo) -- is not an easy task, as Totonno is about to find out. In the meantime, Paula (Belinda Lee) provides a romantic distraction, and another would-be entrepreneur opts for the straight and narrow. This uneven feature offers some colorful performances but the sum is less convincing than its parts.