Movies: João Bénard da Costa

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the...

Episodes from entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a professorish soldier recounts them while marching through a Portuguese African colony in 1973....

The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace....

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....

A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities....

A story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives....

The journey of Michael Padovic, an American professor who arrives with his wife, Helene, at a Portuguese convent where he expects to find the documents needed to prove his theory: Shakespeare was born in Spain; not in England....

A small group of well-to-do vacationers go on a hiking trip into the woods. Foolishly unprepared to deal with Mother Nature and their situation, they wander around lost for days and weeks, becoming more and more fatigued, hungry, and desperate. A bri...

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. ...

Manoel de Oliveira's autobiographical documentary about returning to his hometown....

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....

At the end of the nineteenth century, an army force led by Major Mouzinho de Albuquerque, a cavalry officer, imprisoned in Mozambique the tribal chief Gungunhana, who had rebelled against Portuguese government and sovereignty. Mouzinho instantly bec...

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...

Luciano, fresh out of jail, was taken by his brother, Flórido, to serve in the home of wealthy Alfreda. He was surprised when she told him that her greatest desire was to see the Virgin Mary. Now comes this rich land owner with her sublime pretension...

Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family....

This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manue...

A blind beggar is robbed of his chest of money. The theft leads to a dramatic situation in the street where he begs every day....

A man exiled in Paris makes various trips to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution. Each trip is represented by a woman....

The Midnight Sun Film Festival is held every June in the Finnish village of Sodankylä beyond the arctic circle — where the sun never sets. Founded by Aki and Mika Kaurismäki along with Anssi Mänttäri and Peter von Bagh in 1985, the festival has playe...

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 Amer...