
Day breaks on the eighth floor in a suburban neighbourhood of Lisbon and 14-year-old Bruno’s grandfather is still in hospital. Doctors give him only a few days to live. The imminence of death and the void that it will leave force Bruno to become the man of the house, where he lives with his mother Mónica, who is in her 30s, and his three-year-old sister Érica.
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Tag Archives: portuguese
Cats Have No Vertigo / Os Gatos não Têm Vertigens (2014) António-Pedro Vasconcelos, Maria do Céu Guerra, João Jesus, Fernanda Serrano, Comedy, Drama

An 18 year old boy with a complicated life starts a criminal career but ends up on a rooftop of Lisbon. On the apartment below lives a recently widowed, lonely old lady. Against all odds and her family’s will, they become each others best company.
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Boi Neon / Neon Bull (2015) Gabriel Mascaro, Juliano Cazarré, Maeve Jinkings, Josinaldo Alves, Drama

Iremar works at the “Vaquejadas”, a rodeo in the North East of Brazil where two men on horseback try bring down a bull by grabbing its tail. It’s dusty and back-breaking work, but Iremar is a natural vaqueiro feeding, prepping and taking care of the bulls.
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The Peephole of Love (1981) José Antonio Garcia, Ícaro Martins, Tito Alencastro, Tânia Alves, Hércules Barbosa, Comedy, Drama, Erotic

Innocent girl starts working as a secretary in an office. Soon she finds out a hole in the wall through which she can see the action in the next apartment, where a prostitute meets her bizarre clients.
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América (2010) João Nuno Pinto, Chulpan Khamatova, Fernando Luís, María Barranco, Comedy, Drama

America a tragic story told in a burlesque and ironic way, within a love triangle. Liza, a beautiful young Russian woman, is married to Victor, a small-time crook who lives on scheming and swindling, born and bred in Portugal. Fernanda, the ex wife, who ten year’s passed decides to drop by, is the gang leader, an Andalusian Spaniard. Victor has to decide which women to follow, Liza cannot really leave him, Fernanda doesn’t really want to stay. The six year old kid hangs everybody by a string. Eastern European newcomers give new business perspectives that are going to rock their small world by the beach: Cova do Vapor. A chaotic neighborhood of precarious housing located at Lisbon’s gates, where the Tagus River meets the Atlantic, where fishermen and retired factory workers coexist. An obscure little place, where everything suddenly changes, even the weather. After a violent storm, the gangster’s house gets a rusted fishing boat hanging on top of their home.
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The Chick’s Ability (1984) John Doo, Helena Ramos, Romeu de Freitas, Vanessa Alves, Drama, Erotic

Woman has to choose between being a prostitute or posing nude for a painter, in order to finance an expensive surgery for her son, his only chance to survive.
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A Dama do Lotacao (1978) Neville de Almeida, Sonia Braga, Nuno Leal Maia, Jorge Dória, Drama, Erotic

Carlos and Solange, childhood sweethearts, marry after a chaste courtship. On their wedding night, Solange refuses to make love to him. First he pleads, then in anger he rapes her. She says she adores him, but, even after months of marriage, can’t endure his touch. To prove to herself she’s not frigid, she begins a daily routine of seducing strangers on public busses; she also takes Carlos’s best friend to a motel. Carlos figures out that she’s unfaithful and, armed, confronts Solange. Meanwhile, she seeks psychiatric help because she feels no remorse. Will there be violence and death, a psychological breakthrough, or more bus rides?
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Oscar Niemeyer – A Vida É Um Sopro (2010) Fabiano Maciel, Chico Buarque, Carlos Heitor Cony, Le Corbusier, Documentary

The film is based on face-to-face conversations with the Brazilian architect, with an in medias res beginning and a ’spontaneous’ ending: “The interview is over, isn’t it?” asks Niemeyer, when they begin to talk about women as everyday pleasures for the 100 year-old architect. Besides a wide range of the architect’s mostly public buildings in the biggest Brazilian cities, and also in France, Italy and Algeria, director Fabiano Maciel tries to show us the post-war intellectual and political atmosphere in Brazil, and Niemeyer’s relation to it. We also get to know him as a fighter for social justice and about his role in the construction of Brasilia as a symbol of the workers’ movement in the fifties.
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John From (2015) João Nicolau, Julia Palha, Clara Riedenstein, Filipe Vargas, Drama

Bored by spending the summer in the city, 15-year-old Rita decides to take a fancy to her new neighbor, a photographer who is setting up an exhibit of his shots in Melanesia. What starts as a game turns into a blazing crush and Rita can’t distinguish between reality and fantasy anymore.
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Tatuagem / Tattoo (2013) Hilton Lacerda, Maria de Jesus Baccarelli, Jesuíta Barbosa, Ariclenes Barroso, Drama

1978. While the military coup that assaulted Brazil in 1964 starts to teeter, we follow a romance involving an 18 years old soldier and the cultural ringleader of an anarchist cabaret. Tattoo depicts the conflicts and reflections of a whole generation observed from a marginal perspective. Through the vantage point of the exception, the film elucidates the norm.
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