Portuguese Film Watchlist

Laura Rossellini, a widow from Rome, vacations on the Algarve coast one hot summer. One day while sunbathing, she finds a wounded man named Robert drifting in the surf on a rubber raft. She takes him home, and, after he is revived, learns his story. As they talk, their mutual attraction grows, until a group of armed men suddenly arrives looking for Robert.

By cross-editing footage of Portuguese workers protesting against NATO forces and various movies, Monteiro shows how one 'sword' can confront the army.

"Its uniqueness defines also a model - of cinema, of auteur, of a country, of a time - if that model could be established under the form of vagueness and of incompleteness."

It is a sincere and naive film that combines the themes of nature-man, modernism-man in Rilke's poets with a local narrative.

It's a docudrama with a poetic writing and non-linear narrative. Specifically, it's an "etnofiction": portraits the typical characters of Terra Fria, the North-east of Portugal, showing secular habits, in a majestic rural ambient. It's one of the works that represents the New Cinema (Novo Cinema) portuguese movement, and one of the first portuguese docudrama.

A documentary about a deceased psychiatric patient, Jaime Fernandes.

Cordeiro's most abstract, conceptual and literary work. The film's collage structure gathers texts from multiple sources - including Kafka and Montaigne.

Manuel's fantasy travel through Time goes from Long Ago (Episode 1 - O jardim proibido / Le Jardin interdit) through Now (Episode 2 - O pique-nique dos sonhos / Le Pique-nique des rêves), arriving in the Future (Episode 3 - A pequena champeã de xadrez / La Petite Championne d'échecs).

Follows a jealous countess, a wealthy businessman, and a young orphaned boy across Portugal, France, Italy and Brazil where they connect with a variety of mysterious individuals.

Based on Robert Walser's play, Branca de Neve is a recital of Snow White over a black screen with spontaneous flashing images of clouds and some unintelligible dialogue.

Maria works in a German umbrella factory as the foreman of the production sector. João Lucas has given up on living a normal life and practically lives in bed, in the midst of green plants. His father expressly desired that his son film this eccentric daily life in 8 mm format. Maria's wages are dilapidated to the last penny by this amateur, monstrous, family movie production.

The Mother is one of Monteiro's first essays on the universe of Portuguese oral culture, folktales and obscure colloquialisms. The plot revolves around a traditional tale about theft, greed, an ubiquitous mother, and the links between the worlds of the living and the dead.

For his feature debut Monteiro creatively borrowed from traditional Portuguese legends to craft a series of echoing, parallel tales of young couples desperately escaping cruel false fathers, each couple on the run across different regions of the country and during increasingly contemporary time periods. A lyrical and profoundly cinematographic allegory with a glistening sharp political edge, Paths traces a pattern of repressive authority across Portuguese history while also pointing, with cautious optimism, towards the steady presence of youthful resistance. With its stunning choreography of landscape and use of a poetic, associative structure to evoke the longue durée of mythical time, Paths anticipates Monteiro's mid-career masterpiece Silvestre.

The daughters of a nobleman give shelter to a stranger. After that visit ends with a severed hand, the pilgrim takes on different identities to seek revenge. The nobleman goes missing and his youngest has to pose as a knight to save him.

Lisbon, 1989. A middle-aged poor idiot, tormented by an illness, lives in a cheap room in a family boarding house, in the old section of the city's waterfront.

Eloi, a paunchy middle-aged man, finds Samuel, a young sad sack, about to kill himself by plunging into the sea. Eloi takes Samuel under his wing, giving him a hot meal and bringing him to a seedy night club to introduce him to Esperança, who is said to be the most beautiful sex worker in Lisbon - and is also Eloi's daughter.

Two actors performing in Strindberg's "Inferno" as God and Lucifer are also competitors in real life. One of them, Henrique, is spiritually-obsessed with John Wayne and his way of walking. He and de Dieu, his fellow actor who plays Lucifer and also directs the Strindberg play, engage in a philosophical and spiritual tug-of-war, especially when they meet an author named God who has plans for another drama to feature both actors.

João Vuvu, lives alone in a house that requires regeneration but due to being alone he is unable to do the work. On his son's release from prison and João's ensuing deception triggers a series of somber events.

A story of love and spells.

Short where João César Monteiro depicts his favorite things: movie making and women.

A look at jealousy in its many shapes through romances, riches and murders.

A look at the urban society of the seventies. The story of Marta a young and pretty girl, who leaves her husband to search for her true identity. She doesn't quite know what she wants, but at least she knows what she's escaping from. Soon she encounters financial difficulties and finds herself involved with shady characters, a situation that leads to a mysterious murder. The net closes around her.

In Lisbon, during the feasts of St. Anthony, the cross breeders of politicians in black shirts and transvestites all dressed in pink. An exuberant allegory of freedom against dictatorship.