Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells King Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. As in...
In the beautiful area of Paris, Maria and José Ribeiro lived for almost thirty years on the ground floor of a Haussmann building, in their dear little lodge.
O Crime do Padre Amaro ("The Crime of Father Amaro") is a novel by the 19th-century Portuguese writer José Maria de Eça de Queiroz. It was first published in 1875 to great controversy.
The young, sickly girl Bernadette comes from a poverty-stricken family. When the Virgin Mary appears to her in a cavern near Lourdes, no one takes the girl seriously, even when she digs up a wellspring at the Virgin's instructions The local authorities even try to hush up the entire incident. In...
Story of the 1974 coup that overthrew the right-wing Portuguese dictatorship--which continued the fascist policies of long-time dictator Antonio Salazar--and of two young army captains who were involved in it.
The battle of the sexes? The forces of despair and seduction? On S. Miguel in the Azores, Rogério, a young man with old money, and his enigmatic wife Leonor host a garden party at their villa. The intriguing guests are an older unmarried couple, the philosophical and observant Irene, and Michel, a...
A wealthy landowner, "The Dauphin," enjoys a decadent life of hunting, drinking, and womanizing. He oversees his estate, the Laguna, with his barren wife, his one-armed manservant, and his treasured guard dog. When a sportsman (the film’s narrator) comes to the estate for his annual duck-hunting...
A woman takes her young son, leaves her husband and moves in with her lover. The boy, desperate to get his parents back together, becomes convinced that if only he can get his father's stolen motorcycle back everything will be fine again, so he sets out to get enough money to buy his father a new...
A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this...
Alentejo, Portugal, 1950. In a desolate region, where the wind seems to speak, where misery and hunger reign over poorest, a desperate man takes his revenge on those who caused his ruin during the darkest night, unable to get honestly the bread needed to feed his family in the daylight.
In 1752, a ship arrives in Brazil, bringing doctor and writer Gaspar de Fróes. He keeps a diary about the dangerous trip, the diseases and hunger aboard, his impressions of the new country, and the political struggle between the crowns of Castela and Portugal. In Brazil, he is going to fall in...
Every year, four ex-soldiers who call themselves "Os Imortais" ("The Immortals"), get together with four women to celebrate their war deeds and remember the old days, back in the war. On the summer of 1985, tired of their monotonous lives, they decide to rob a bank. Joaquim Malarranha, a chief...
The formerly great Swiss hotel which Valentin’s family owned when he was a boy has been emptied and is about to be torn down. He revisits the magical site’s empty halls and ballrooms.
Amadeo: a mysteriously restless and indefatigable man as if always sensing brevity of the time he had left. An artist out of definition, whose painting questions the painting itself, indomitable, scandalous and misunderstood. For being «Infinitely» according Almada, is someone who never had the...
Catarina Menezes is a bisexual TV reporter who decides to have a child on her own and chooses Spanish humanitarian doctor Rafael to father the child, setting up an elaborate charade to lure him into her bed. When Catarina reveals her pregnancy, though, her current live-in girlfriend doesn't take to...
The story of Father Antonio Vieira, a 17th-century Portuguese priest who lived in Brazil and worked for better treatment of the Indians and to abolish slavery.
