Isabel de Castro

In Brazzaville, in 1944, Alex Emmerich was sentenced to wander the seas by Hélène Latray, the wife of Félix Beauvois, the man Alex loved. In 1962, exiled on Hatray cruises and feeling the coming death, Alex decides to compose for his love a testament: the photographic report of his agony.

Hector Pelegrin, an unsuccessful insurance agent is admitted to the prestigious school Ferran as a gym teacher. The only problem is that he completely lacks the necessary skills for the job. He organizes a game between the football team at his school and another center, a historic rival, resulting in a surprise full of humorous criticism to our society. Pelegrin tries to convince everyone that football is just a sport

Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. In her youth she marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, her 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. As time goes by she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a new lover.

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

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A portrait of the everyday life of a typical middle-class family in parallel with the fall of the "Estado Novo", the 48-year dictatorship led by Salazar. The daughters' conflicts and frustrations with their parents, their grandmother and their maid find an obvious echo in the country's collective events. The Carnation Revolution is about to explode.

A young theater student receives an invitation from his unknown father to go to Angola with him. On the trip, he meets an Angolan student who returns to his country. When he goes to his father's address, he has a big surprise and his life will change ...

In the summer of 1870, Raquel, who owns a farm, and lives secluded in her mansion with an old butler and a handful of servants, feels proud when an odd acquaintance comes by. Adriana and her daughter-in-law, Ermesinda, a very young girl, just happen to be visiting - the second time in 15 years for Adriana, and the first time for the teenager Ermesinda. The meeting seems to be pleasant, and yet, for reasons untold, there is coldness and reserve between Adriana and Raquel. Their ambiguous relationship will be revealed, when by accident old wounds are reopened.

In a unique approach to what amounts to four pseudo-morality plays, director Monique Rutler has a street entertainer with hand puppets summarize the characters and idea of each story. The first sketch is about a young man who shines shoes for a living, and tries to keep up a relationship with two women while convincing each she is his only true love. The next story is about a man who beats up his wife when he is drunk, and sells furs for a living. One day, as she is riding in the back of his truck with the furs, he hits a bad patch and she and some furs fall out. The question is, will the woman be enterprising and leave the jerk - or not? The third tale concerns a woman looking into how much control a prostitute has over her clients, and to really find out, she becomes a prostitute herself for awhile - leading to some quite unexpected situations. The last segment handles the uglier side of the life styles of the rich and famous.

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.

No description available.

No description available.

The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.

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.

Manuel and Pedro have different approaches to love. Manuel suffers a disgust that makes him sullen, and enters the priesthood. Pedro keeps on in his carefree ways, and commits a robbery. Manuel knows the robber is Pedro, but he learned it in Catholic confession. To keep his vows as a priest, he is prepared to be arrested.

Nino, tough but sickly, and his older brother Vicente live in the country with their father. After their father disappears ― we’re never sure why ― murder is suggested. Vicente brings his girlfriend to the house, and a different kind of family is established as the three youngsters grow fiercely protective of each other. But their uncle grows suspicious about the fate of the missing father and forcibly kidnaps Nino, taking him away to the city and leaving Vicente to locate him there.

Based on a the short story "Low Flying Aircraft" by J.G. Ballard and set in a near future where humans are dying breed. Judite and André flee to a semi-abandoned apartment complex to protect their mutant child from certain death.

Young Jesus is taken on a vacation by his parents (Rita Blanco, Adriano Luz) to a deserted beach resort. They accidentally fall into overnight wealth after Jesus digs in the sand, uncovering a large drug stash. Others characters intersecting here include an alcoholic actress, a philandering banker, a general trafficking in arms, priests who close their church and head north as hitchhikers, politicians who watch an all-girl production of Julius Caesar, and beggars who recite a children's story in a huge heap of trash.

Jan thinks he is Swedish-Danish, but after his mother's death he discovers he was adopted. As his world begins to fall apart, he decides to find his birth parents. The hunt leads him to Portugal - in a taxi - where more surprises await him.

At the end of the seventeenth century, in Naples, still dominated by the Spaniards, a young pupil, Balthasar,is castrated to preserve the purity and beauty of his voice. The Duchess dies and her son, the Duke of Arcos, takes charge of the inheritance, which includes Balthasar. With the entrance of Maria Loffredo, former lover of the Duke, a triangle is established that unchains tragic consequences to the allegedly callous life of Balthasar.

In Africa, during the colonial war, a patrol is lost in the bush and a soldier dies in operation. Twelve years later, in Portugal, the soldier family meets in peace.

The Life of Mirrors is one of the sections of the exhibition Luis Miguel Cintra - Small Theatre of the World. A commission by Serralves Foundation to Regina Guimarães and Saguenail, and constructed after an unpublished interview with Luis Miguel Cintra, this film is the result of a long and painstaking exercise of selecting and editing excerpts from films by Manoel de Oliveira in which Cintra participates as an actor. In this way, The Life of Mirrors is a reflective, retrospective essay film, which opens the Carte Blanche, thus establishing a gateway to Luis Miguel Cintra's cinematographic and cinephile career.

Reflections on life and death unfold through the eyes of Jorge, the head doctor of the Haematology Department, whose world is plunged into despair when he falls in love with Clarisse, a woman suffering from advanced leukemia.

Pierre, a middle-aged tourist guide, is the victim of a sudden failure : he does not recognize anything about him any longer. He goes back home and in his apartment he finds a mysterious young man who tells him he is here to avenge a young woman who has taken her own life. What share of responsibility does Pierre hold in this situation?

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.

Ambulatory history, freely inspired by Georg Büchner's biography (1813-37) and the reasons that led him first to political intervention and then to strict isolation. With students of unidentified present time (1968? 1970?), the themes developed, in Büchner, are triggered by the publication of "The Messenger of Hesse", a pamphlet addressed to the peasants, urging them to revolt. Their misunderstanding, as well as the repression of the young revolutionaries, leads Büchner to a particularly skeptical and painful attitude...

Upon arrival in Barcelona, Miguel is fired from his job as a sailor and the financial problems which he will face from that moment will gradually introduce him into the world of crime. The little money they his wife Ines had previously saved , thanks to her hard work, will be quickly squandered by him.

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.

Ana, a former member of the Basque terrorist group ETA who lives in a small village near the Portuguese border working as a veterinarian and sharing her days with her partner Darío and their daughter Amalia, meets José, an attractive man who participated in the dirty anti-terrorist war against ETA criminals who took refuge in France.

Lúcia is an independent woman who lives alone in Lisbon. Her father commits suicide leaving her a message on phone recorder, revealing a letter he wrote. However Lúcia can't find it in her father's house. On that visit she ends up meeting with her mother, a known political activist with whom she has a distant and tense relationship. In hope of finding the letter, Lúcia leaves to the farm where she grew up, on an isolated location. There she reencounters Álvaro, an old childhood companion, who shares a little life time he has left between roses and the piano, and the guardian angel that follows and protects her through nocturnal wanderings.

Two boys are sent to reform school under the guidance of Father Fernando, a young and dedicated priest.

Spanish Zorro adaptation

The relationship between António and Ruth ends unexpectedly when Ruth decides to live with Pedro, António's best friend. António doesn't fight back and lets himself drown. From the woods come Violeta and Gaspar, two strange beings, a mixture of fairies, demons and guardian angels, who help António overcome his depression. With the thunders the two characters return to their domains. And life goes on.

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Amo-te Teresa tells the forbidden love story of Teresa and Miguel, aged 35 and 15, respectively. Teresa is a doctor and, after a frustrated love life, she decides to abandon Lisbon and returns to her native land. Immediately, a strong attraction forms between Teresa and Miguel, a friend of her oldest son.

After being fired from his company, Pablo meets his friend Ana, who introduce him to Pedro Ramírez, an undesirable lawyer, who offers him 15,000 pesetas for reports about his ex-company with the intention of doing a rob. When the lawyer's gang goes to give the coup, Ana reports them to the police, with the idea of taking the loot and fleeing with Pablo. But all of them are arrested and end up together in prison, where the intrigues and skirmishes between them will continue.

"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

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.

On her journey to a provincial capital, Elena falls for the director of the Company of Zarzuela and leaves with him, despite opposition from his father. But the guilt of having abandoned him pursues her constantly to the point to shake their relationship.

The characteristic loves of Margarida and Clara, the distinct moral of Pedro and Daniel, the goodness of João Semana, and the dissidents, sensibility, tenderness, rituals and landscape involvement of the Minho.

Cape Verde, 1964. At the feet of a mighty volcano, the traditional Cape Verdean society is undergoing a steady change. The old land-owning aristocracy is disintegrating. A class of "mulattos" begins to emerge, with a trade-based financial power that threatens the landlords. A new identity arises, a mix of old and new, of African and Portuguese culture, sensual and dynamic. The songs of Cesária Évora follow this inevitable transformation. From the novel by Henrique Teixeira de Sousa.

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Lola and Maria are two Spanish young ladies engaged to Franz and Pepe, all so eager to spend their honeymoon that the moment seems never to come, as all sorts of problems pave their way.

Xavier returns to Lisbon after a military stint, determined to lead a meaningful life, only to find his world closing in on him.

Biographic documentary about the Portuguese actress, Isabel de Castro.

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.

A Marialist nobleman falls in love with a fado singer, who puts an end to the ephemeral relationship, accepting the love of a teenager, recently arrived from Africa.

The disastrous attempts of D. Lucas Telmo Midões to achieve in 1981 the independence of the Berlengas islands - lost eight centuries ago, during the conquests of D. Afonso Henriques.

No description available.

A young policemen witnesses a bank robbery which will become his first case. To catch the thieves he will infiltrate himself as one of the gang members. At first it works, but it won't be so easy afterwards.

An old woman is woken in the dead of night by a phone call. On the line, a stranger fights his insomnia by dialling random numbers.

Gloria is set against the backdrop of a rural landscape slowly disappearing in modern Portugal. The small border town of Vila de Santiago, once a booming trade center for illegal trafficking, is about to become a ghost town, as a new motorway is to bypass the city and the railway station is being closed. Its stationmaster, Vincente, is preparing to retire. Many young people have moved out, leaving the children to be brought up by the elderly, including thirteen-year-old Glória and her friend Ivan. Glória's life suddenly changes with the arrival of Vincente's younger brother, Mauro, who has just come out of prison and has some old issues to settle. Mauro begins to charge around the station on his motorbike, while Glória's friendship with Ivan is put to test on account of her attraction to older Mauro.

The film of a performance of a selection of cabaret comedy sketches by Karl Valentin, with Jorge Silva Melo as stage director. The show was a complete success and has become almost legendary. Solveig Nordlund shot it, adding some more sketches that weren’t included on the show.

Confusion caused by Jerónimo, an old man abandoned in a hospital unit, staging his own death.

A group of robbers assault a factory in the port of Barcelona, but, upon being discovered, they are forced to flee hastily, each one his own way. An exhaustive police device is then initiated with the aim of capturing them. But the police persecution to which the members of the gang are subjected incites distrust between them and, one after another, they will fall, until only two remain.

The rich heiress of an emigrant lives a season of retreat and rest in the Asturian village from which her father left as a child. The experiences that await him will mark his destiny.

Johnny, aged 20, can't live without Fanfan, his twin sister. There is a very particular intimacy between them. They walk together everywhere, share the same room, the same tastes, the same bike, the same camping tent. But also a conflict principle sets in. Oppressed by his overbearing need, she decides to head for the south of Portugal, the country of their parents. His dreams are shattered; he feels deeply betrayed by his sister. Caught between his father who is preparing to retire to Portugal and his mother who refuses to leave France, he tries to work out his own identity. His passion for rock music gets him involved with his sister's former lover. By following this charismatic leader preaching dubious ideology, he risks losing his "gentle half" forever. Meanwhile in Portugal, she becomes disillusioned. Will they manage to grow up without each other?

Based on the work by Fernando Pessoa - a "message" about the destinies of Portugal - not just in isolation but looking at them as precursors and announcers of the fate of the entire planet.

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.

Some time ago Gerardo knew another man of the same age called Berardo. When he said the name, Berardo expressed his oppinion violently, saying that the «G» was owed him and that Gerardo, since he owned it had somehow stolen something from him. Berardo then tries to get something back which soon goes beyond a baptismal name. Gerardo whitnesses this strange spectacle of himself as a place where, after Berardo, other people try to get something back, something that escapes them about themselves. Three women - Adália, Miranda and Virgínia - are whitnesses to this game

The film was to be a documentary, but evolved during production to a fictional film. It nevertheless adheres strictly to the poems and letters exchanged by two of the most outstanding names of the Modernist Movement, Fernando Pessoa (in Lisbon) and Mário de Sá-Carneiro (in Paris). Their endless conversation was dramatically and suddenly terminated.

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Amanda is a melancholic prostitute, in love with a regular client, a disenchanted doctor. Since the day Amanda met this man, he has become, without knowing it, her only client. This explains why Amanda, since then, has been stealing suitcase in a bus station in order to live. One day Amanda steals a suitcase which is different than the other. Its content will change her life.

Francisco just got out of prison after a six year sentence and is now a free man. He wants to change, and after a few days sleeping in the subway tunnels, and some small jobs, he finally gets a room on a cheap hotel. He changes his looks, gets a job, lives his life.

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.