Marcello Urgeghe

A regular family living in the outskirts of Lisbon sees the serenity of their lives shaken beyond any remedy within a week.

Throughout a year's work, a group of ten actors and a film director will work together on the creation of the characters and on the structure of the plot of a new film to come. Long sessions of discussion, rehearsals and endless repetitions serve to develop the most important scenes of that plot until it takes its ultimate form, in the film which results from this work.

In 1970, a man is tortured and murdered by the regime's secret police. Now nearly 40 years later, his friend, who had also been tortured, recognizes the man he deems responsible for the murder of his friend. Along with three old friends and the victim's daughter, they kidnap the man and take him to an isolated house. Once there, the concepts of justice and revenge begin to mix dangerously in a private trial with irreversible consequences.

A film about General Humberto Delgado's brutal assassination by the Portuguese fascist police in 1965.

Passionate romance, brutal treachery, and selfless nobility are set against the background of Napoleon’s 1810 invasion of Portugal.

Joana, 40 years old medical phychiatric, is married to Paul, an executive of a large financial company. Paul hopes that Joana fulfils her role and follows his constant social influences demonstrations. But the marriage is profoundly altered when Mónica, a young model, enters Joana´s life. Irresistibly attracted, they involved romantically, in a world of liberating experiences and feelings. But this will be a short trip, since the revelation of this affair forces Paulo to take drastic measures... ~ FICA

1907. Afonso, a doctor, arrives at Principe Island to cure servants from a cocoa plantation “infected” with Banzo, nostalgia of the slaves, who are dying from starvation and suicide. The group is confined to the forest, where Afonso decides to heal them by trying to understand what is affecting their soul. Will he manage to save them?

Jorge is a loner and a writer of popular books. At night, he looks through other people's windows and thinks that they are truly happy.

Organized like a dream, structured like a musical and with texts, both spoken and sung, that lead us to unexpected, chaotic and exciting situations, which try to grasp part of what the unattainable Alexandre O'Neill left us.

No matter how calm the surface of the ocean appears to be, each time we cross the line that divides land and water we enter an unknown and unexpected world. Does our world remain the same when we come back on shore?

On a day like any other, a woman leaves work and heads to a party in the outskirts of Lisbon. On her way there she sees a man ready to jump off a bridge. She stops the car and approaches the man, trying to save him.

The story of a family of bull fighters.

During the war of in-dependency Evita moves from Lisbon to Mozambique to marry Luís. She slowly discovers how different and disturbing life is in a country of war and when her husband is send on a military mission she starts to fight loneliness. Over time she finds out more about her husband and Mozambique than she would have imagined in her peaceful European home. Racism, violence, injustice and fatalism make life unbearable...

Oscar, a renowned hypnotherapist, uses the last moments in his hotel room to say goodbye to the vertiginous Mercedes and rid old Norberto of his bitterness.

Adaptation of a 1987 novel by Agustina Bessa Luis, a multi-generation exploration of a wealthy family with a mysterious past and a house on the island of Madeira.

Vera is a singer in her thirties; she is back in Lisbon for the final performance of her concert tour. The heat and beauty of Lisbon makes one want to be happy. Pablo, the companion she selected from among the many who answered her questionnaire, helps her through the sleepless nights. He has no family, but wishes he had. Vera concerns herself with the mysteries surrounding Pablo's life. Vera is not afraid of the night; she is not afraid of anything.

"Come and see this world end!" - wrote the the priest António Fontes, father of folk medicine and "burning witches" in Vilar de Perdizes, a desperate plea in his precious monograph of the Barroso region. And I (João Botelho) went. Then I saw the people and the land. Haunting on discovery. Heart sank. "God is good but the devil is not so bad!" - We learned from this Community habits and that is great, tough and generous. And I also learned that no fairer place for a demand of life and even the elusive happiness there, I assure you, it is always possible.

In the mid-20th century, a troubled relationship between Germana, a young writer, and Quina, her aunt who lives in the northern Portuguese countryside. Feelings of jealousy, admiration and the complex magnetism between these two strong women arise.

Laura lives in the country with her considerably older husband. When Nuno, her brother who study in Lisbon, pays a visit, he realizes that his sister does not have a happy life. He initiates a friendship with a worker on the farm. The circumstances turn Laura and Nuno against each other... Portrays the repressed sexuality and homosexual desire in a rural setting and elliptically and delicately the small farming community that serves as the backdrop for the impossible relationships pursued by Laura and her brother.

The young film student Maria do Mar is working on a documentary about the old manor houses along the Douro River. It is the final project in her thesis on “Reality in Cinema”. Maria has an unlimited confidence in what is visible. Her candour and her naivety allow her to see the bright side of life – such as the beauty of the landscape and the authenticity of the place, or what’s left of it. But when Maria enters the final manor house on her list, she soon realises that something is going on in this house that is not as innocent as it first seemed. The manor is truly a house of horrors.

Cristina is twenty years old. Her father was declared missing in action during the war in Angola many years before. One day in church the girl meets a man about fifty years old who tries various times, unsuccessfully, to make the sign of the cross. The man is called Cristovão. A few days later the two meet again. The man offers to help her look for her father. A relationship based on memories and confessions is formed between them. But soon they each return to their own solitude.

Tomás is a young teenager who fights for the leadership of a small marginal group. One night, in the world that he cannot control, his fallout leads to the death of one of the group's members. Laura, the possible witness to the crime, becomes a threat.

Dina (Maria Santiago) is a teenager brought up by her grandmother, employed as a housekeeper for a fairly well-off family. Since Dina only has her grandmother, she spends her time fantasizing about her life and reading comic-book love stories -- activities that do nothing to improve her dim perspective of reality. Due to these handicaps and her own inexperience, she gets involved with Django (Luis Lucas), a shady character who decides to use her as bait to attract men and then rob them. One day when both are in a taxi with robbery in mind, the driver gets suspicious so Django shoots him, and so does Dina. She escapes and runs away -- though it seems like she has learned too little too late. This story unfolds against a time of upheaval in Portugal (mid-1970s) when the military government is formulating a constitution and social changes are happening everywhere.

Struggling against the crisis in Portugal, a mother doubles up jobs to pay the bills since her husband is unemployed. Their teenage daughter tries to keep living everyday life even if the money is running short, which makes everything uneasy. Escaping from their common reality, they slowly become strangers to one another, as the tension grows in silence and in guilt.

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 tragedy and comedy in Carlos' life begins, grows and ends like the tragedy and comedy of Portugal. In the company of his close friend, João da Ega, allegedly a brilliant writer, Carlos, with his idle existence as an aristocratic doctor, spends his time to enjoying friends and lovers. Until he falls in love. She is a new character in this revolutionary novel. It's a vertiginous passion that goes beyond that past gloominess to reach a new and darker abyss, incest.

Lisbon, today. In a room of a house at Douradores Street, a man invents dreams and theorizes about them. The essence of the dreams itself becomes physical, palpable, visible. The text itself materializes in its musicality. And, in front of our eyes, this music can be felt with the ears, brain and heart. It spreads itself in the street where the man lives, in the city that he loves above all and over the entire world.

“An old photograph taken 36 years ago. His hand rests on my shoulder. A blessing, a gift. Then a history of over four decades of friendship, admiration and apprenticeship. A journey into Oliveira’s cinema, his method, his way of filming and his extraordinary cinematic inventions. He lived for over a century, over a century of cinema, cinema in its entirety. For him, and for me too now, documentary and fiction films go hand in hand; it is all about cinema. So I had the audacity to film a magnificent story that Manoel loved but never filmed, one that he left behind as if his hand and eyes were close to God, or among the gods, and he was steering me.” - João Botelho

This dark and intense drama follows the slow and painful destruction of a young, passive woman as she watches her family fall apart. Maria is the shy and dutiful daughter upon whose shoulders the family traumas have fallen. In addition to a regular job she cooks, cleans, and studies. Her parents offer no assistance as her father is blind, with a tendency towards violence when drinking. His wife, the focus of his violence is terribly unhappy. After a particularly brutal beating, Maria's brothers rise up against the father and end up leaving the home. It is up to Maria to try to bring the factions together. Maria's pressures increase after she calmly stabs her boss during an attempted rape, and then copes with her mother's suicide.

This is the story of a young Mozambican footballer called Eusébio, a gifted athlete destined to great achievements, coveted by rival clubs, Sporting and Benfica, which ends up hiring him. Blackmail, kidnapping attempts, ministers involved, press hysteria and huge money offers make the story of this football transfer into a saga evolving between the two continents. It ends up when the legend begins: with Eusébio’s first match at the Benfica Stadium.

Dora divides her time between her work as a beautician, her policeman husband António, and her involvement in left-wing politics. A tale of love and how we must learn to cherish it against all odds in the pursuit of happiness.

A story about character created by Reinaldo Ferreira (1897-1935), action reporter, mystery novelist and emotion journalist.

Fernando Pessoa, one of the greatest writers in Portuguese, created an immense parallel world and several heteronyms so as to endure the loneliness of genius. José Saramago, 1998 Nobel Laureate in Literature, has a heteronym, Ricardo Reis, return to Portugal after a 16-year exile in Brazil. 1936 is a perilous year with Mussolini’s fascism, Hitler’s Nazism, Spain’s Civil War and Salazar’s New State in Portugal. And Fernando Pessoa meets his creation, Reis. Two women, Lídia and Marcenda, are Reis’ carnal and impossible passions. “Life and Death as one” allows for literature and cinema.

At the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro. Portugal's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.

Adventurer, pilgrim, penitent but above all outstanding writer, Fernão Mendes Pinto left us an unparalleled romance, the living and human palpitation of one of the greatest historical adventures of man.

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?

Francisca, a beautiful 50-year-old widow, prepared a peaceful future for herself. In an unexpected outburst, she grabs an opportunity for change and embarks on a sailboat called ‘Hovering Over the Water’.

Zézé Gamboa's sardonic historical drama follows a good-hearted, apolitical con man who, on the eve of Angolan independence in the mid-1970s, pulls off a massive swindle at the expense of the Portuguese colonial administration — and soon after finds himself hailed as a hero of the national liberation struggle.

An American writer visits the old Portuguese town of Guimarães for a lecture on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. What would seem like a nice little trip goes terrible wrong when his own paranoia takes over the events that follow... or maybe not.

Pedro gets home at dawn. Before the young boy falls asleep, his lonely mother drags him to the beach.

Paulo works as night security in a deactivated industrial complex. He lost his daughter in dramatic circumstances, and no regrets would console him. He sleeps at Luisa's house and witnesses the repeated transgressions of an unstable neighbour. Everything threatens to crack.

Using video assist recorded images, Antecâmara is about the “act” of shooting, the physical reality and ritual energy of two film crews during the preparation for a shot. The first video assist rule is that the image one sees in it has to be more interesting than what one sees outside. Nothing is left to chance. It helps to preview the shot, organise space, arrange the scenes, move the actors and light the set. And it provides it all with a meaning depending on how the camera is used. It is the space-time before the shot, where it is sketched.

Zephyrus is a film-voyage, a fresco about Southern Portugal. A movie dealing metaphorically with the South of Portugal, singling it out as a place where various cultures came together and mix, giving birth to a singular identity, as unique as this movie itself, a mixture of fiction and documentary

Cinema and affections from life in images and what goes on outside the frame. 'Snapshots' of shootings and the present-day memory of directors, actors and technicians.

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.

X, a film location scout, spend his time travelling from place to place looking for filming locations, at the same time that he's looking for funding for the film he wrote himself. In the middle of nowhere, as in the nowhere of his life, he stumbles on Y, the woman for whom he has been waiting all his life.

An adaptation of the 1907 political novel of the same title by Joseph Conrad set in Portugal during the so-called "Hot Summer" of 1975, re-contextualizing the anarchist prose within the Carnation Revolution.

The chronicle of a Portuguese family that owns one of the largest estates in Europe, on the south bank of the River Tagus. The Domain delves deeply into the secrets of their homestead, portraying the historical, political, economic and social life of Portugal, since the 1940's to these days.

Set four years after the Portuguese revolution and the simultaneous loss of the Portuguese empire in Africa, the story concerns a director who sells guns to finance his play.

We stare at mirrors as if 'image' was a weapon of self-defense. At night, I hide in actors' dressing rooms for a working class experience. By day, I face an old theatre being razed to the ground, making way for a parking lot. Graffitis have curtains, the nose cap of an umbrella arises from a mount of sand. Oh, Happy Days! No need to stage anything! The bulldozer is a dinosaur whose teeth and gracious neck swings by a EU flag. In the boxes, we await the audience. Sometimes, nobody comes. Lost in a symbolic show of reality, I can only watch the world's end because all the endangered species perform and a reflecting labyrinth of life stories breaks through the glass of the Economic Eating Machine. Even when the sky is falling, theatre will always happen. So, choose the right place.

The story of the making of "O Bobo" by José Álvaro de Morais, that lasted 10 years from start to finish.

A young actress becomes politically aware within the Paris Commune of 1871.

On the night of New Year's Eve, a small group penetrates into the room of an old hotel in ruins. Carmine, the oldest of the group, poses a challenge to one of the men, Furio: he has 4 months to restore the hotel and inaugurate it with great pomp. Aware of the difficulties but anxious to prove the point, Furio accepts encouraged by his wife Margo who believes that this assignment will allow the couple to rediscover the lost momentum.

THE LOVEBIRDS intertwines six stories about love, friendship and survival. The film stars an international cast of American and Portuguese actors who create a colorful mix of off-beat characters that lead us through a complex labyrinth of emotions. Set in the old Romanesque city of Lisbon during the course of one night where love is the art of survival. Written by Anonymous

A woman alone with her secret until one day she can not hold it any longer.

Ofelia is the daughter of photographer Miguel and of deceased circus artist Lea. When her father is hospitalised with a nervous breakdown, she decides to find out the reason and in doing so discovers the truth about the relationship between her parents and the true fate of her mother.

A teen girl is wrongfully suspected for a crime. A former cop helps her to proof her innocence. There's only one problem : her behavior brings the two of them more than once in trouble.

The daily experiences of many antifascists - who suffered, until the political prison, which sealed his esteem and united them in a covenant of justice against a "pide" assassin (eted). But the April 25 and May 1, to September 28 and March 11, follows the November 25 - striking dates a forthcoming story. Time caused the wear of the revolutionary process, exacerbating social and economic problems. In the intellectual groups of the left, where the ideological coherence flew over the everyday practice, is dug a crisis of identity and options. An early vote, perhaps radical, unites -still - a determined activist and a journalist who wonders ...

In Victorian London lives a man of adventurous spirit and great wit, Charles Augustus Howell, art agent, art dealer, conspirator and master of blackmail.

The misfortunes of Sofia, the exemplary Madalena and Camila, the troubled vacations of girls and boys, a few years later leading to the resolution of some mysteries, form the perfect trilogy by the Countess of Ségur on education, social, religious, and political power. Desire and its oppression, violence and punishment, in short, the terrible loss combined with inevitable growth. Both adults and children will understand that precepts, rules, and prayers can tear nerves and blood apart.

Forget everything, or recover memory and remember. Let yourself fall and stop, or return to life and start again. Adrift, lost face-to-face, two women confront their fates. Is there not just one thing worth saving? Without hesitation, the desire to live, that rebellious fury that takes no heed of risks. And how do you save a world where poetry has disappeared?

Accused of adultery, Ana Augusta Plácido and Camilo Castelo Branco were imprisoned for more than a year in the Porto Prison, she in June 1860, he in October of the same year, after an adventurous escape from justice through the lands of the North.

The tragic story of the many lives of Father Dinis, his dark origins and his pious works, and the different fates of all those who, trapped in a sinister web of love, hate and crime, cross paths with him through years of adventure.

Maria Vitória lives in a remote village in the Portuguese mountains and plays football on the local boys youth team. Determined to become a professional, she devotes all her free time to intense training with her father. Their routine is shaken by the unexpected return of her older brother, who left many years earlier after a tragic fire that took their mother’s life. As she prepares for the most important match of her life, Maria begins to question her father’s authority and gradually seeks a way to break free and take control of her own future.

Which language shall we use to tell the stories we have been told? In which language shall we write a declaration of love? Lisbon, Bairro das Colónias, third floor. Conveying and translating an insightful encounter between different worlds, Fatumata and Aissato, mother and daughter, discuss love and the happiness. Their feelings have been determined by narratives and languages acquired at different stages of life and in different places. At 7pm, from the third to the fifth floor, where I live, a regular sound, always the same, like the beating of a heart, reverberates through the building.