Olivier Blanc

Ana was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ruled by religion and traditions. Growing up as the middle child of a family of three with her mother and grandmother. Early Ana realized that girls and boys were given different tasks. Through her friendship with Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, Ana questions the world that is promised to her. When her friend Cloé arrives from Canada, bringing with her the glowing days of youth, Ana embarks on a journey that will take her beyond the horizon.

Paul y Adèle fueron amantes y se separaron pero siguen siendo buenos amigos, un año después todo parece alejarlos. La clave de Mi bemol puede ser la clave de la verdadera amistad, pero es Mozart quien los separa...

Maria starts to show signs of wanting to belong somewhere else: scales appear on her skin, roots appear on her legs, and she hears the sound of water - she dreams of being a fish. One day her daughter comes across her disappearance and reconstructs, through the memory of her gestures and meetings with her mother, a possible explanation for her escape.

'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.

Film adaptation of "The letter from the hunchback to the locksmith" by Fernando Pessoa's heteronym Maria José.

Patrick, 20-years-old, lives in Paris with his older boyfriend. He runs a teenage pornography website, which results in a prison sentence following a raid at a party. Mário, 8-years-old, was kidnapped 12 years ago in Portugal. Patrick and Mário are the same person with two conflicting identities: a life in Paris filled with parties, drugs, and promiscuity and a new rural life in Portugal, where he feels obliged to reconnect with a broken family.

Un meteorito se estrella cerca de la granja de los Gardner, liberando un organismo extraterrestre que convierte la tranquila vida rural de la familia en una pesadilla colorista y alucinógena. Uno de los relatos más emblemáticos de Lovecraft llega al cine de la mano de Nicolas Cage y Richard Stanley.

La danza macabra es un antiguo género artístico, representación alegórica de la muerte como danzante esqueleto que nos recuerda que los goces mundanos tienen su fin. Escuchar hablar a Jean-Louis Schefer (escritor, filósofo, crítico y teórico de cine) de las danzas macabras, es sin duda un goce mundano, aquí envuelto en paisajes portugueses, museos y abadías. Y filmado por Rita Azevedo, que compone cada plano como si fuera un cuadro, y editado por Pierre Léon, que pone en paralelo a sus palabras un lúdico recorrido por la historia del cine, de las Silly Simphonies a Renoir, Mizoguchi y Buñuel.

They all say that you killed an Angel. Who says that ? They. It’s not an Angel. It isn’t ? No. It’s a rare bird, just like you and me.

En algún momento del Medioevo tardío, el noble Herren von Ketten (Marcello Urgeghe), en pleno conflicto con el Episcopado de Trento, busca matrimonio en un país lejano, Portugal. Su esposa será una mujer portuguesa (Clara Riedenstein) que se instalará en el castillo de los von Ketten al norte de Italia. Recluida allí, con su esposo en la guerra, quedará embarazada de su primer hijo. Su vida transcurrirá entre criados, lecturas, juegos con un cachorro de lobo y el aprendizaje de algunos oficios manuales. Será un universo pautado por el ritmo masculino y en el que las mujeres deben parir, criar y esperar.

Diamantino no es una persona cualquiera, tiene el don celestial de tratar muy bien el balón... Un don que, de un día para otro, desaparece, dejando a esta estrella del fútbol desamparada y obligándole a buscar un nuevo propósito a la vida. Comienza entonces una odisea fabulosa y una sátira política protagonizada por un jugador cuyo pose, pendientes y corte de pelo recuerdan a Cristiano Ronaldo.

Alentejo, Portugal, 1950. In a desolate region, where the wind seems to speak, where misery and hunger reign over poorest, a desperate man takes his revenge on those who caused his ruin during the darkest night, unable to get honestly the bread needed to feed his family in the daylight.

Inspired on the true events of the Portuguese king Don Pedro (14th Century) which unburied his mistress to make her queen after dead. This film tells the story of Pedro, a man admitted to a psychiatric hospital for traveling by car with the corpse of his beloved, recalling simultaneously three different lives: one from the past, another from nowadays and another one from an distopic future.

A few months before WW2 a family is torn apart: Maria goes to Timor, her brothers to Portugal. After Japan invaded Timor and Maria is sent to a prisoner’s camp, her family fears the worst. A documentary about a silenced period in Portuguese history.

Which language shall we use to tell the stories we have been told? In which language shall we write a declaration of love? Lisbon, Bairro das Colónias, third floor. Conveying and translating an insightful encounter between different worlds, Fatumata and Aissato, mother and daughter, discuss love and the happiness. Their feelings have been determined by narratives and languages acquired at different stages of life and in different places. At 7pm, from the third to the fifth floor, where I live, a regular sound, always the same, like the beating of a heart, reverberates through the building.

After the Carnation Revolution the peasants in the Alentejo region occupied the huge proprieties where they were once submitted to the power of their masters. The protagonists of this film, resistants of this struggle, tell their story to the youngsters of today, in their own words.

In 2011 Portugal began the so-called "year of the Troika" (EU, IMF and ECB budget cuts and economic restructuring), with the level of debt among the Portuguese people reaching staggering amounts and a growing number of families and companies unable to repay their installment loans. Jorge is an unemployed boxer on the verge of losing his son and his wife, who has decided to return to Brazil. As a means of paying off his debt and persuading his wife to remain in Portugal, Jorge accepts a job with a debt-collection agency, which will drag him into a world of violence and crime.

Manuel Teixeira Gomes the Portuguese President who left everything behind with only one premise: become who he really wanted to be

Correspondências cuenta la historia de dos poetas protugueses de la segunda década del pasado siglo, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen y Jorge Sena, que se intercambian cartas, ya que el segundo de ellos se encuentra en el exilio.

Correspondências cuenta la historia de dos poetas protugueses de la segunda década del pasado siglo, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen y Jorge Sena, que se intercambian cartas, ya que el segundo de ellos se encuentra en el exilio.

Una joven estudiante de cine conoce a un antiguo estudiante de la escuela que no puede quitarse de la cabeza un nombre: Catarina Vega. Ambos vivirán una historia enlazada con el pasado, y el futuro. (FILMAFFINITY)

Day breaks on the eighth floor in a suburban neighbourhood of Lisbon and 14-year-old Bruno’s grandfather is still in hospital. Doctors give him only a few days to live. The imminence of death and the void that it will leave force Bruno to become the man of the house, where he lives with his mother Mónica, who is in her 30s, and his three-year-old sister Érica.

Resistiendo con fiereza en el barrio lisboeta de Fontainhas, donde lleva más de dos décadas filmando, y flanqueado por Ventura –el caboverdiano de triste figura de Juventud en marcha– Pedro Costa regresa, estableciendo un pasadizo secreto entre la Revolución de los Claveles de 1974 y la actualidad en Lisboa. Mientras los jóvenes toman las calles, la gente de Fontainhas busca a Ventura, perdido en el bosque, en un film de misterioso claroscuro como el de su mente deteriorada, perdida en un sueño febril tras una vida de trabajo duro y pobreza.

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small for his aspirations and he decides to head to Brazil, leaving his sisters in charge of the household. In parallel with Vitalino’s story, If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal portrays the world of Paulo Rocha rummaging through his films and ghosts over the years.

La ciudad portuguesa de Guimarães fue, durante el año 2012, Capital Europea del año. El filme Centro Histórico es la combinación del trabajo cuatro cineastas sobre cuatro distintas historias que tiene lugar allí. El primer episodio, titulado El tabernero, está dirigido por Aki Kaurismäki y tiene como protagonista a un hombre solitario, que ve pasar la vida observando los distintos acontecimientos, pero sin experimentar nada de primera mano. El segundo episodio tiene como nombre Dulce exorcista, su director es Pedro Costa e indaga en el pasado colonial. Finalmente, el último episodio del filme, El conquistador conquistado, tiene como director a Manoel de Oliveira, que hace una sátira de los turistas que toman fotografías sin parar del centro de Guimarães.

Rafa is a 13 years old kid concerned with his mother, held in a police station for driving without a license. The director shows a day in the life of a teenager who lives on a problematic area and discovers that her mother was arrested because of an automobile accident.

Márcia es madre soltera de dos hijos, trabaja como cocinera y comparte su casa en un barrio periférico de Lisboa con su hermana, Ivete, peluquera en un centro comercial. Un día, Cláudia, su hija, que estudia enfermería y trabaja como cajera en un supermercado, le cuenta que se ha enamorado de un hombre casado mayor que ella. Un apasionado relato familiar con todo el espíritu de los grandes melodramas.

Maria, a Ukrainian doctor, comes to Portugal to spend a year with Greco, her husband who is also a doctor. Upon arrival at Faro airport she is the only person from Kiev approached by agents of Immigration and Customs that lead her to a room of interrogation, without any explanations. All this occurs because the authorities suspect that something illegal should be behind her trip, since she is from Eastern Europe and her husband is Senegalese.

On a summer's day, a mother, daughter and granddaughter's care-free day trip comes to an abrupt end. Beautiful and restrained.

The story of a man who sees his life change radically upon confronting his progressive loss of memory. As his neurological condition advances, it affects not only his own life but the lives of all those who surround him.

Humberto hanged himself. Catarina, Paulo and Victor want the company where Humberto used to work for to take responsibility in his death, leading them to kidnappe the company’s director in an act of despair. Who is Humberto? What company is that? In which paths will he take us, after his death? Cinerama is an edgy, enigmatic, but not distant film that brings up genres of cinema as well as other forms of art like dance, theatre and poetry. The film reflects ways of being in life.

Una historia sobre el arte y los hombres cultos, y sobre como su arte a arte y su cultura se revelan inútiles ante las duras realidades de la vida del siglo XX.

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.

Previously focused on Asian directors, “Jeonju Digital Project 2007” takes a look at Europe. The Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, the German filmmaker Harun Farocki, and the French filmmaker Eugène Green participated in this project.

A man has to sell the home he has spent such happy times in. His daughters have grown up and left. Reluctantly, he shows the house for some buyers: a young couple with a kid. When they arrive, in love and so happy, the house owner sees a reflection of himself years before. This unexpected glimpse of his past makes handing over somehow easier to bear…

After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.

Una historia de bigamia y doble traición donde los personajes centrales son Don Alfonso III y una mora, de quien se enamoró. El rey que completó la reconquista del territorio portugués, traiciona a su mujer y la mora traiciona a su padre.

A documentary about Álvaro Siza Vieira in Cape Verde and his project to restore the old town of Ribeira Grande, the first city to be built by the Portuguese in Cape Verde on the island of Santiago in 1462.

Lisboners (people of Lisbon) celebrates the ancient notion of citizenship, the right to the city in the making, in each migrant’s daily life, living and working. It is set in Lisbon but it happens in London, New York, Paris, Rome… anywhere. The Lisboners are people from Brazil, Guiné-Bissau, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, Ukraine, Moldavia, Russia, and Estonia.

A fairy tale from the computer age: a 15 year-old boy finds a computer, which has the magical power of undoing short periods of his life.

"I've been on this cliff for almost a year, here on the lookout. Always aware of the sea and the enemy, even though I've never seen him. The man riding a horse gave me a new order, to be even more on alert, waiting for a mirage, for a ghost that will not come."