Inês de Medeiros

A hundred letters written by Portuguese women during the Salazar dictatorship were found by chance in a second-hand bookshop. By confronting today the women who wrote these letters with the ghosts of the past, and revealing important archive material, Letters to a Dictatorship takes us on an in-depth journey through the obscurantism that dominated Portugal for more than 50 years.

A hundred letters written by Portuguese women during the Salazar dictatorship were found by chance in a second-hand bookshop. By confronting today the women who wrote these letters with the ghosts of the past, and revealing important archive material, Letters to a Dictatorship takes us on an in-depth journey through the obscurantism that dominated Portugal for more than 50 years.

"At first everything was relatively simple. I was looking for a boy of African origins, between 16 and 18 years old to incarnate the role of Alberto in the film I had just written. As they were not actors, I asked candidates to tell me a story of their choice. What they gave me was a lot of life, and they did it with such generosity and authenticity that I was the one concerned. Would I be able to find the same strength, the same emotion?" - Inês de Medeiros

"At first everything was relatively simple. I was looking for a boy of African origins, between 16 and 18 years old to incarnate the role of Alberto in the film I had just written. As they were not actors, I asked candidates to tell me a story of their choice. What they gave me was a lot of life, and they did it with such generosity and authenticity that I was the one concerned. Would I be able to find the same strength, the same emotion?" - Inês de Medeiros

An American ornithologist meets a French student on a trip to the Basque Country in 1975.

Ali, an aspiring actor, works in a government-aided butchery, and takes a part in a cheap play, while his father wants him to start working in fruit trade. Ali pursues his long-lived dream of traveling abroad and flies to France with an acting troupe, where he starts living illegally alongside many other Arabs, and starts a life-changing experience that he won't remember fully until he returns to Egypt.

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.

It's September in Lisbon… Elsa’s young daughter leaves with her father, and Teresa, a friend’s friend, comes to stay in her room. One night the two women go out and meet Raul, a vagrant lover of Elsa. A triangle takes form. They finish the night on a boat by the name of Pandora, but in the morning Raul sails away, alone. Elsa and Teresa will start a new life...

Authentically painful study of an ill-matched couple's forlorn attempts to revive their relationship after a two-year break.

Michèle is the new French consul in a South American country. She quickly discovers that the government is, in fact, a dictatorship. Moreover, her seventeen-year-old daughter is involved in the revolution against the regime.

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, on a winter day in 1994, between six and fourteen o'clock. A forty-year-old woman despairs in the last eight hours preceding the birth of her first child.

This European drama, set in Paris, follows a brilliant musician as he suddenly forsakes his career, to live and love amongst the common populace. Armand is the violinist who yearns to experience that life and to share his music with everyone, not just the wealthy and the elite. He leaves the glittering world of classical music without a backward glance and takes up residence in the Paris metro where he is surrounded by beggars and tramps. There he meets and becomes friends with Lydia, a metro employee.

When a man's best friend is shot in cold blood by two corrupt policemen, he must track down the only eyewitnesses, who have deported to Mali.

Miguel (Luis Miguel Cintra) is lucky that his income will only level off if he neglects his business as a financier, and his wife and family will be well supported. Why? Because he has begun hearing noises that no one else hears, noises that bother him a great deal, and that make it impossible for him to bear human society. His wife (Jessica Weiss) is thoroughly put out by this radically changed behavior in her formerly good husband, but though she considers leaving him, she stays by his side. Deep in the mountains, Cecelia (Rita Dias), a devout, pure young cowherd, has been brutally raped by an old man. Her boyfriend (Pedro Hestnes) has killed the rapist, and fled the area. As a result of the rape, Cecelia is pregnant. One day, while driving in the mountains, Miguel gives Cecelia's boyfriend a ride. The two of them chance upon her sitting amid the rocks with her infant baby.

Zephyrus is a film-voyage, a fresco about Southern Portugal. A movie dealing metaphorically with the South of Portugal, singling it out as a place where various cultures came together and mix, giving birth to a singular identity, as unique as this movie itself, a mixture of fiction and documentary

This Portuguese movie directed by João Botelho, is part of The Four Elements series. This is the second episode, The Air.

"Crimen en Beja (Alentejo): Helmut Schneider, 23 años, de nacionalidad alemana, mecánico en la base de la OTAN ha sido encontrado asesinado. María Victoria Formosinho, 18 años, apodada Mitó, hija del responsable político del Partido Comunista local, ha pasado a disposición judicial". Al recibir el télex, Contreiras, director del periódico de Lisboa 'Las Actualidades', prepara un equipo de reporteros para enviar al lugar del crimen. Sangre, sexo y política en una región de Portugal donde esos hechos son muy poco habituales. (FILMAFFINITY)

A passion between a 42 years old man and a young girl.

Dos hermanos, Nino y Vincente, han aprendido a desenvolverse muy bien juntos durante las inexplicadas ausencias de su padre. El día que aparentemente desaparece para siempre, no tienen ningún problema en seguir como antes. Sin embargo, un día unos criminales que habían tenido negocios con el padre, intentan sacarles información a la fuerza...

Lisboa, 1989: Un pobre diablo de mediana edad vive en el cuarto de una pensión barata y familiar, en el casco antiguo de la ciudad. Atormentado por una enfermedad y por vicisitudes de orden diverso, el idiota, que se alimenta de Schubert y quizás de una vaga cinefilia como forma de resistencia frente a la miseria, es puesto de patitas en la calle tras un intento frustrado de atentar contra la virtud de la hija de la dueña de la pensión. Solo y privado de recursos, se ve confrontado con la dureza del espacio urbano y es internado en un hospicio, de donde saldrá con la firme determinación propia del hombre libre, y con una misión “rica y extraña” que le ha sido encomendada por un viejo amigo, enfermo mental como él: “!Ve y dales trabajo!”.

Lisboa, 1989: Un pobre diablo de mediana edad vive en el cuarto de una pensión barata y familiar, en el casco antiguo de la ciudad. Atormentado por una enfermedad y por vicisitudes de orden diverso, el idiota, que se alimenta de Schubert y quizás de una vaga cinefilia como forma de resistencia frente a la miseria, es puesto de patitas en la calle tras un intento frustrado de atentar contra la virtud de la hija de la dueña de la pensión. Solo y privado de recursos, se ve confrontado con la dureza del espacio urbano y es internado en un hospicio, de donde saldrá con la firme determinación propia del hombre libre, y con una misión “rica y extraña” que le ha sido encomendada por un viejo amigo, enfermo mental como él: “!Ve y dales trabajo!”.

Laura lives in the country with her considerably older husband. When Nuno, her brother who study in Lisbon, pays a visit, he realizes that his sister does not have a happy life. He initiates a friendship with a worker on the farm. The circumstances turn Laura and Nuno against each other... Portrays the repressed sexuality and homosexual desire in a rural setting and elliptically and delicately the small farming community that serves as the backdrop for the impossible relationships pursued by Laura and her brother.

Laura lives in the country with her considerably older husband. When Nuno, her brother who study in Lisbon, pays a visit, he realizes that his sister does not have a happy life. He initiates a friendship with a worker on the farm. The circumstances turn Laura and Nuno against each other... Portrays the repressed sexuality and homosexual desire in a rural setting and elliptically and delicately the small farming community that serves as the backdrop for the impossible relationships pursued by Laura and her brother.

Constance Dumas (Bulle Ogier) dirige un prestigioso curso de teatro, donde sólo se admiten mujeres. Cuatro de sus alumnas: Claude (Laurence Côte), Anna (Fejria Deliba), Joyce (Bernadette Giraud) y Lucia (Inês de Medeiros), forman una una especie de banda y viven juntas en una casa de los suburbios parisinos. Las cuatro chicas, una tras otra, se irán topando con Thomas (Régent), un misterioso desconocido que las alerta sobre el peligro que corre Cécile (Natalie Richard), una de sus amigas y compañera de clase. Cécile, mientras tanto, se muestra bastante inquieta y parece más fascinada por una enigmática historia de amor que por sus clases de teatro. (FILMAFFINITY)

A film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel "Hard Times" set in a Portuguese industrial town of the 1980s.

A world of strong colours between documentary and fiction, centered on the life and work of modernist painter Amadeo de Souza Cardoso.

12-year-old Miguel is punished because he has not done his homework properly: he must stay at his aunt's inn for holidays. First bored, then a friendship begins between him and other inn's regular holiday-makers, like maid Luisa or fisherman João. But doctor Fernando's arrival is going to overwhelm the place's peaceful life and to change Miguel's mind.

This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manuela de Freitas) both loves and hates him as Joao plays on her wavering emotional state. He is sent to Italy to retrieve wayward family member Antonia (Caroline Chaniolleau), the beautiful young woman with a terrorist boyfriend. Joao is forced to recognize his feelings as the political and amorous climate changes around him.

A young man from a high-bourgeois family, Henrique receives mysterious phone calls from a woman at the barracks where he is serving in the military, which attracts him to meetings without consequences.

Guinea-Bissau: Portuguese Colony, year: 1973. An Ex-military returns to his hometown. Bringing back with him a vague sense of guilt due to the killing of two men (a soldier and a native) by his sounding of the alarm during one given night.