Portugal

Synopsis
“IMDb wrote:
Violante, a young and beautiful catholic nun, is facing a few marital issues with her husband Jesus Christ – who stalks her through the dark corners of a decaying convent and seeks to punish her for her (alleged) sins. In a dark stormy night they struggle to win each other to their personal points of view. She quotes the bible in terms of unconditional love – He does the same in terms of capital punishment. But are His manly insecurities based on solid grounds? After escaping His jealous rage, the nun lurks through the dark alleys and the bars like a vampire. Doomed to loneliness, all she wants is a Man. And who can this Man be?Read More »

Quote:
The bitch is called Maria and she is a sweet child. She has no father and does not like her mother. She has a boyfriend who is a bandit who would like to change his class.

There are two more bandits: a very tall singer and a guy from Oporto who is a very short and a full of life’s experiences. Neither of these two do much thinking, one even less than the other.Read More »

Quote:
For the extraordinarily beautiful second film in his Fontainhas trilogy, Pedro Costa jettisoned his earlier films’ larger crews to burrow even deeper into the Lisbon ghetto and the lives of its desperate inhabitants. With the intimate feel of a documentary and the texture of a Vermeer painting, In Vanda’s Room takes an unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but is centered around the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte. Costa presents the daily routines of Vanda and her neighbors with disarming matter-of-factness, and through his camera, individuals whom many would deem disposable become vivid and vital. This was Costa’s first use of digital video, and the evocative images he created remain some of the medium’s most astonishing.—The Criterion CollectionRead More »

Venice Film Festival wrote:
The film was made upon the invitation of the Serralves Foundation in Porto for the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Foundation and the 10th anniversary of its Museum. A reflection on the Painéis de São Vicente de Fora, a 16th-century masterpiece attributed to Nuno Gonçalves.Read More »

Synopsis
On September 27, 1810, the French troops commanded by Marshal Massena, were defeated in the Serra do Buçaco by the Anglo-Portuguese army of general Wellington.

Despite the victory, Portuguese and British are forced to retreat from the enemy, numerically superior, in order to attract them to Torres Vedras, where Wellington had built fortified lines hardly surmountable.

Simultaneously, the Anglo-Portuguese command organizes the evacuation of the entire territory between the battlefield and the lines of Torres Vedras, a gigantic burned land operation, which prevents the French from collecting supplies.

This is the setting for the adventures of a multitude of characters from all social backgrounds – soldiers and civilians, men, women and children, young and old – to the daily routine torn by war and dragged through hills and valleys, between ruined villages, charred forests and devastated crops.Read More »

Quote:
Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.Read More »

How presumptuous of the prince to have disturbed Snow White in her beauty sleep, to have kissed her and removed her from her glass casket in order to restore her to life, i.e. in order to possess her in the flesh. But Snow White must learn that love and hate are never far apart. She understands. She was just being silly and now all’s well that ends well. She has opted for happiness. But at what price?Read More »

Quote:
Lisbon of the nineties. Three siblings, a girl and two boys, live together in a most close kind of relationship. The centre of the story is the girl, Maria, who hardly ever says what she thinks neither knows what she wants. “Teresa Villaverde re-states her sensitiveness in this portrait of a fragile girl in a film of high visual elegance of utmost sadness.”
Positif, November 1994Read More »

Quote:
It all begins when an average family (slightly chilly because they’re forced to take their vacation out of season) is struck by good fortune.
Jesus the couple’s young son, finds a hidden and forbidden treasure in the sands of a deserted beach: the wealth of the hearth.
The same day, and not so far away, two priests decide to close the doors to their church due to lack of a congregation, and auction off the images of their beloved saints.
Between the wealth of the heavens and the spirit of matter they embark on an adventure. A banker with auditory hallucinations when he talks about money.Read More »