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Essential Portuguese Cinema

In Vanda's Room (2000)
Pedro Costa · 14 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but taking as main focus the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte.
Trás-os-Montes (1977)
António Reis · 10 critic votes
The first feature in António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro’s trilogy is a journey through this almost mythical region of north-east Portugal, a tapestry of micronarratives where past, present and future become intertwined.
Vitalina Varela (2019)
Pedro Costa · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Fandor, Philo
A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.
Amor de Perdição (1978)
Manoel de Oliveira · 5 critic votes
A story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives.
O Fantasma (2000)
João Pedro Rodrigues · 5 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV
Sergio is a brooding, alienated man who works as a trash collector in Lisbon by day and roams the city streets by night seeking rough, anonymous sex with men. One night he meets a man who seems to be the embodiment of his tormented fantasies, and he becomes obsessed with the stranger until loneliness and unfulfilled desire propel him finally into a dark and dangerous animalistic state.
Abraham's Valley (1993)
Manoel de Oliveira · 4 critic votes
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.
Colossal Youth (2006)
Pedro Costa · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.
Tabu (2012)
Miguel Gomes · 4 critic votes
Streaming on MUBI, Kanopy, MUBI Amazon Channel
Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.
Francisca (1981)
Manoel de Oliveira · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.
Recollections of the Yellow House (1989)
João César Monteiro · 3 critic votes
Lisbon, 1989. A middle-aged poor man, tormented by an illness, lives in a cheap room in a family boarding house, in the old section of the city's waterfront.
A Ilha dos Amores (1982)
Paulo Rocha · 2 critic votes
This film depicts the life of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Wenceslau De Moraes by means of nine ancient ballads from China. The writer married a Chinese woman after he left his wife and family to go live in Macao. Later, he moved to Japan where he fell in love with a Japanese woman, staying in Japan for the rest of his life. Mixed in with the career and loves of Moraes is the history of Portugal at home and in its colonies.
Visit or Memories and Confessions (1982)
Manoel de Oliveira · 2 critic votes
A long-hidden, personal doc about leaving a beloved house by the late, revered Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira.
Manoel's Destinies (1985)
Raúl Ruiz · 2 critic votes
When the child Manuel wanders into a garden that is off-limits to him, he meets an unidentified fisherman, and another boy -- the boy is actually himself several years down the road. Manuel experiences three different versions of his encounters in the garden, revealing that fate can have several twists and turns in one's life, depending on decisions that are made early on.
The Mutants (1998)
Teresa Villaverde · 2 critic votes
Three homeless teenage rejects struggle to survive together. Of them, Andreia is pregnant, while Pedro and Ricardo hustle, steal and are exploited by a pornographer.
Frágil como o Mundo (2000)
Rita Azevedo Gomes · 2 critic votes
An impossible love. Two young people who love each other. Vera and João can’t find in this life the space, time, or identity to resolve their love story.
Aniki-Bóbó (1942)
Manoel de Oliveira · 1 critic vote
Two schoolboys, Carlitos and Eduardo, fight for the affection of a girl, Teresinha.
Os Verdes Anos (1963)
Paulo Rocha · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, his working-class values collide with the bourgeois trappings of modern life.
Change One's Life (1966)
Paulo Rocha · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
After completing his military service in the Angolan War of Independence, Adelino goes back to the Portuguese fishing village he calls home, only to find that the woman he loves has married his brother. Overcome by bitterness, he sets off to find work in the countryside where he meets Albertina, a free-spirited young woman who challenges him to change his life.
A Bee in the Rain (1972)
Fernando Lopes · 1 critic vote
This Portuguese drama examines the daily life minutiae and intrigues of two scions of society in the rural village where they live. One is a wealthy landowner, the other a widowed aristocrat who lives in a world of her own.
Ana (1982)
António Reis · 1 critic vote
Centered on an elderly matriarch and her family in the Trás-os-Montes region of Portugal. An exploration of the cycle of life and death, using the main character, Ana, as an emblem of a life lived in harmony with nature and tradition.
The Satin Slipper (1985)
Manoel de Oliveira · 1 critic vote
During the century of the Spanish Gold, Doña Prouhèze, wife of a nobleman, deeply loves Don Rodrigo, who is forced to leave Spain and go to America. Meanwhile Prouhèze is sent to Africa to rule the city of Mogador. Ten years later Rodrigo leaves America and travels to Africa in search of Prouhèze to find out that she died and eventually meeting her daughter.
The Sound of the Earth Trembling (1990)
Rita Azevedo Gomes · 1 critic vote
Freely based on Gide ('Paludes') and Hawthorne ('Wakefield'), this is a film about a writer who never wrote anything and who blows at nightfall the breath of frost. The poem by Carlos Queiroz to which the above sentences belong is not cited in 'O som da Terra a Tremer', but the atmosphere is that, between written letters never received. Fiction within fiction, stories within stories, like those Chinese boxes in which there is always one inside another. Or the two margins of the same river, always being lateral.
God's Comedy (1995)
João César Monteiro · 1 critic vote
An ice-cream seller lusts after the female employees in his shop.
Passeio com Johnny Guitar (1996)
João César Monteiro · 1 critic vote
Lord knows where João de Deus has been. He's come home wounded in the head. He's got a bit of the soundtrack to Johnny Guitar in his head. Strangely enough, there is no sign of the hole in his head. Day breaks over the city. Further strolls are in sight. It is said that Mr. Monteiro, the alter ego of João de Deus, occasionally goes out with Nicholas Ray. At least, they've been seen together.
As Bodas de Deus (1999)
João César Monteiro · 1 critic vote
After receiving a visit from a messenger of God, João de Deus wins his buddy's girlfriend through a roll of the dice.
The Letter (1999)
Manoel de Oliveira · 1 critic vote
A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.
Branca de Neve (2000)
João César Monteiro · 1 critic vote
Monteiro moved far away from the visual opulence defined by his earlier films with his inspired adaptation of radical Swiss writer Robert Walser’s anti-fairy tale. Carefully restricting the image track, Monteiro maintains an almost totally black screen in order to focus instead on the voices of Snow White, the Prince, the Queen and the Hunter, engaged in an extended debate about love, free will and the events leading up to the fateful attempt on the maiden’s life. Despite its visual austerity, Snow White is haunted by the arresting images with which it begins – infamous black-and-white photographs of Walser lying dead in the snow after his heart attack outside a Swiss asylum at the age of seventy-eight, a strange realization of the “death of the author” so central to postmodern literary criticism.
Where Lies Your Hidden Smile? (2001)
Pedro Costa · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Fandor
Undaunted by a commission to make a film about his mentors and aesthetic exemplars, the filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Costa records with great sensitivity and insight the exacting process by which the two re-edit their film Sicilia!, discussing and arguing over each cut and its effect. Incorporating comments about the influence of figures as diverse as Chaplin and Eisenstein, about the ethical and aesthetic implications of film technique and such matters as rhythm, sound mixing, and acting. The film becomes a tour de force, immersing us in the mysteries of cinema as practiced by some of its greatest creators. Costa calls the film both his first comedy and his first love story.
The Uncertainty Principle (2002)
Manoel de Oliveira · 1 critic vote
Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family.
A Talking Picture (2003)
Manoel de Oliveira · 1 critic vote
A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.
Our Beloved Month of August (2008)
Miguel Gomes · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, DocAlliance Films
In the heart of Portugal, amid the mountains, the month of August is abuzz with people and activity...
The Strange Case of Angelica (2010)
Manoel de Oliveira · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
A photographer, Isaac is asked by hotel owners to take portraits of their recently deceased daughter Angélica. When he looks at her through the lens of his camera, she appears to come back to life just for him. He instantly falls in love with her. From that moment, he will be haunted by Angélica day and night.
A Woman's Revenge (2012)
Rita Azevedo Gomes · 1 critic vote
Streaming on DocAlliance Films
Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.
Captivity (2012)
André Gil Mata · 1 critic vote
To be captive is to be confined, both in space and in time. The captive one is not only and necessarily a prisoner, but becomes an inherent part of that space, his identity being continually projected on it. The captivity space itself is in turn not inert; it is rather characterized by whomever it contains, it is shaped by that experience.
Gebo and the Shadow (2012)
Manoel de Oliveira · 1 critic vote
Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them.Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.
What Now? Remind Me (2013)
Joaquim Pinto · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, DocAlliance Films
Joaquim Pinto has been living with HIV and VHC for almost twenty years. “What now? Remind Me” is the notebook of a year of clinical studies with toxic, mind altering drugs as yet unapproved. An open and eclectic reflection on time and memory, on epidemics and globalization, on survival beyond all expectations, on dissent and absolute love. In a to-and-fro between present and past memories, the film is also a tribute to friends departed and those who remain.
O Ornitólogo (2016)
João Pedro Rodrigues · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Strand Releasing Amazon Channel
Stranded along a sublime river fjord in northern Portugal, an ornithologist is subjected to a series of brutal and erotic Stations-of-the-Cross-style tests.
Dark Light (2017)
Susana de Sousa Dias · 1 critic vote
Mingling identity photos taken by the Portuguese political police during the Salazar dictatorship and testimonies from the children of an assassinated communist activist, Luz Obscura invents a form that recreates as faithfully as possible the feeling of a family's broken identity.
The Portuguese Woman (2018)
Rita Azevedo Gomes · 1 critic vote
Streaming on DocAlliance Films
North of Italy, the von Kettens dispute the forces of the Episcopate of Trent. Herr Ketten seeks marriage in a distant country, Portugal. After their honeymoon journey back home, Ketten leaves again for the war. Eleven years elapsed… Rumours are running about the presence of that 'foreigner' in the castle. Some say she's a heretic. Until one day, the Bishop of Trento ends up dying and, with the signature of peace, falls the background of von Ketten's life. Will the Portuguese win, where death seems to be moving in?
The Metamorphosis of Birds (2020)
Catarina Vasconcelos · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Metrograph
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.
Fruit of Thy Womb (2021)
Fábio Silva · 1 critic vote
This movie is a journey through the director’s childhood. Fábio Silva uses the cinematic apparatus to take us on a trip to the past, to his past, towards the reasons behind his current estrangement from his father, calling on home videos as evidence of his account. A mysterious film in which the young filmmaker risks exposing his family privacy, full of betrayal and forgiveness. It is a privilege to watch a story told with such boldness, in which the boundaries between author, audience, and family trauma are barely distinguishable.
Grand Tour (2024)
Miguel Gomes · 1 critic vote
Streaming on MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel
In 1917 Burma (now Myanmar), a British diplomat is set to marry his fiancée, but after a sudden panic, escapes to Singapore, sending her on what evolves into a chase across Asia.

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Essential Portuguese Cinema

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