João Pedro Mamede

In the 1970s, across Europe, left-wing armed movements thrived: ETA in Spain, the IRA in Ireland, the Red Brigades in Italy, and the Baader-Meinhof Group in Germany. Portugal would have to deal with a similar phenomenon in the 1980s with the FP-25 (Popular Forces April 25th), a far-left organization defending the conquests of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, which ended 48 years of dictatorship. The organization gradually lost touch with the people it aimed to protect, and was dismantled by a massive police operation in 1984.

Miracles still happen—or so they say… What is the place of the sacred in the contemporary world? Looking again at a myth that haunts us, that of Saint Anthony of Lisbon (and also of Padua), through the timeless painting of Goya, 13 Alfinetes is a story of love, revenge, and blood. It begins with a reenactment of an episode supposedly occurring in medieval Lisbon, filtered through the cosmopolitan 18th-century Madrid, and returning to Lisbon today, where miracles, in truth, no longer happen.

A bronze figure declares his love to a woman, Isabel. Isabel recognises her inability to reciprocate this feeling and to surrender to this relationship. This story is staged by a Third Person, in a closed room with no time, in an atmosphere of urgent search for perfection in the performances of the two interpreters. The Third Person is, in turn, observed by a Fourth Person.

When night falls, a man pierces the darkness and encounters a monstrous being that speaks to him in an unknown tongue. Night after night he gives himself over to this obsession, trying to understand what the shadows hide. He tries to photograph it, draw it, but is consumed by the darkness.

Madrid, Spain, 1936. The young Miguel Gila lives happily with his grandparents in a humble attic; but the outbreak of the Civil War forces him to go to fight.

Pavese considered Dialogues with Leucò his best work. Eloquent and at the same time sententious and fragile, but implausible among humanized gods, demigods, heroes, and other pagan figures of Greek mythology, who question, through the imaginary of myths, the society of contemporary man. Out of a time and a certain space, and thus, and like all myths, always current.

Vargas is an undercover agent whose mission is to capture a group of robbers. The robbery of a jewelry store will be the ideal moment to catch them in the act. After a conversation with Ricardo, one of the group's members, Vargas questions his view of the enemy, making the mission much more difficult.

A protagonist in limbo, with a precarious work situation, a temporary home location. And a hidden facet of his life that he reveals to few.

Filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos sifts through the memories of her ancestors. Her naval officer grandfather, Henrique, who married her grandmother, Beatriz, on her 21st birthday, spent extended periods at sea, leaving her with six children. This is the beginning of a generational saga.

In 1918, Maria Adelaide Coelho da Cunha, heiress and owner of the Diário de Notícias, leaves the social, cultural and family luxury in which she lives to escape with a petty chauffeur, 26 years younger.