Luís Lucas

VIEIRARPAD begun with the correspondence between the couple Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szènes, between 1932-1961. The letters and the intimacy of their words are pretext for the exploration of an equally intimate visual journey

Oliveira do Hospital, 1995. A screenwriter looking for inspiration, a failed actor trying to get back into the spotlight, and a suitcase full of cash hidden in a chimney. These are the ingredients of Serpentina, whose characters, while trying to make a movie, find themselves in a gangster film they don't know how to get out of. This film is part of the Contado Por Mulheres (Told by Women) project. This is a unique project in Portuguese audiovisual media that brings us the freshness of new female directors, all from different generations and recognized for their talent in various areas such as cinema, theater, dance, and advertising.

A theatre having national as part of its name, at the top of a square, reflecting a country’s history. But which one? This is a voyage through the various narratives about D. Maria II National Theatre, forged through the intentions of the several regimes that intended to convey their own ideologies within the theatre’s mission. This is also the story of those who fought against it, opposed the institution and became part of it. How can one become heir of these stories, even if never having set foot inside.

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.

In 1974, a group of men lost their lives in what is still called today the Bloodless Revolution of Portugal.

One day they meet randomly on the street: João is unemployed, Clara works in the film industry as a production assistant. They were colleagues at film school. She invites him to participate in this film she’s working on. “Eternal Flame” it’s a melancholic comedy about the dynamics of a film crew and the growing pains of a young slacker. A homage to the family of Portuguese cinema and cinema itself

Algarve, late 90s. Following the death of her grandmother, Milene - a strong young woman full of life despite a slight mental handicap - divides her life between her family of notables and a Cape Verdean family that keeps her going, whom she met when her grandmother died. The wind that whistles in the cranes plunges us into the world of two families against the backdrop of Portugal's recent past.

At the age of 71, a highly regarded writer, José Cardoso Pires, suffers a major stroke and loses his memory and the ability to relate to the rest of the world. Everybody seems to defy the famous author to write another novel that recounts this adventure telling his "last story", the most conclusive of his career, the one of his accidental journey to the clear shadows territory.

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.

George, an agoraphobic young woman, cannot go more than 522 steps away from her home. One day, a personal tragedy forces her to embark on a journey from Spain to her native Portugal. Along the way, George's whole world begins to widen…

In an isolated village of the Alentejo region, a conflict arises. José Vitorino, one of the landowners of the region, rich in prehistoric monuments, wants to build a luxurious solarium in lands filled with ancient rocks, places of devotion and sacred rituals. Indifferent to the people’s protest, who believe in the magical powers of the stones and that the region’s drought is due to the rocks’ destruction, José Vitorino hires an architect to plan his new house. On christmas eve, in the middle of the winter solstice, a strange ceremony around a dolmen, once an altar for bloody sacrifices in more remote times, releases a harmful spell. A race against time to reverse the faulty charm begins.

A blind teacher breaks the rules to help a female student rediscover the pleasures of life.

Between February and July 1858, in the Massabielle cave, the Virgin appeared eighteen times to Bernadette Soubirous, a miserable little girl from Lourdes. A true revolution in the heart of the Second Empire that shakes the established order by his universal message of love and prayer.

Two years after consorting with the wrong people cost him his job as public prosecutor, Eduardo Silva is a measly defense attorney, who works from his hotel room. Loosing a bit from her fellow-angler uncle, he gives a shot as unpaid apprentice to freshly-graduated gypsy Marcia Amaya, whom nobody would consider hiring so far, but is soon offered crossing to the office of Silva's successor as prosecutor. Their first client is common-as-muck Joana Soares, accused of murdering her beached-up husband after a public fight, without an alibi, claiming a blackout. Eduardo is countered while working out, with help from Marcia's and Joana's families, how the affair actually relates to illegal trade in medicine, with twists including the involvement of a crime lord.

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.

Diana was born and raised in the neighborhood of Estrela Polar, lost hers parents when she was a child and leads a band of criminals who negotiates for drugs, money laundering, weapons, paintings, jewellery and tobacco.

Daniel had a plan, a sort of journal of the future, written in a notebook. Sometimes he went back to rectify small things, but still, life seemed pretty easy and happiness too. But, all of a sudden, everything changed for the worse: Portugal collapsed and Daniel lost his job. He couldn't afford to pay the mortgage for his house any more. His wife, also unemployed, left with his children, searching for better opportunities.

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?

A biographical drama about revolutionary Anita Garibaldi.

Lazarus de Jesus is the adopted son of a wealthy lady from Lisbon, whom he calls Grandmother. It is she who introduces him to Godfather, a great businessman who takes him as his protégé, and Angelina, the woman Grandma wants him to marry. But Lazarus has other hidden interests, the most important of which is an obsessive fixation on female armpits. When he sees the violinist Maria Pia playing, Lazarus immediately falls in love and starts to live for her, which will precipitate an absolutely unpredictable ending.

A day in the life of a grandpa.

The film tells the story of Martin, a child of nine years, who one day disappears from private school where he studied. Police mounted a major search operation across the city to find him. All hypotheses are possible: What happened?

No synopsis available yet.

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.

Lisbon Attorney and former DA Eduardo Silva never got over the death, two years ago, of his wife valentine in a car crash. When he and his gypsy assistant Marcia Amaya hear crime baron Tiago Zarco is arrested having been found over the corpse of the massive pharmaceutical fraud case, she's surprised like the DA that Eduardo offers to defend Zarco, who accepts while keeping his uncooperative right hand-lawyer on, even if that solves their law firm's dire financial state. Silva seems prepared to risk his lawyer license for vengeance on the monster who had an affair with Valentina, yet refuses to look away from indications that Zarco hasn't committed or ordered the murder, but sets a risky trap for those fiends, which proves extremely difficult and dangerous.

Portugal, 1944. In a country oppressed by a brutal dictatorship, there are those who resist and mobilize the people to fight for bread and freedom, even if it cost them prison, torture or their lives.

In Lisbon, Marcelo writes a novel, using the life of his own wife, Beatriz, as the main inspiration to the story. The creative process of the book takes a dangerous path, ultimately compromising the love they feel for each other.

No synopsis available yet.

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.

Picture yourself at home... The phone rings and they try to sell you something - the usual idiots... Only this time they're selling you a suicide, your ordered suicide. This is what happened to Luis Tinoco, a wretched creature who had already thought about dying. A comical character, with a bizarre childhood and who in adulthood is unable to be happy. Tinoco buys his own suicide, prepared and designed to match the reason for which he wants to die: love.

The documentary about the life of Fernando Pessoa, defended by journalist Clara Ferreira Alves, underlines how, in just 30 years, Fernando Pessoa built an immense body of work, of astonishing quality and all of this while being nothing more than an anonymous office worker all his life.

Agnès Dormes, a famous opera singer, saves Julie, a baby girl who was about to be sacrificed during a black mass. Twenty years later, the baby has turned into a beautiful energetic twenty-year-old young lady determined to find out about her origins. In Avignon, Julie manages to meet Agnès and discovers on the occasion she is not her real mother. A series of adventures will ensue and at a time Julie is nearly burned on the stake. But she eventually achieves her end and can marry, a street performer close to her heart.

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 inspector from the local police force who is about to retire, crosses their path and chooses to spend his last days of duty trying to solve the robbery. But as he carries on with his investigation, he discovers more than he could have ever imagined...

A small village in Portugal, Águas-Altas, is being sued by a Spanish multinational corporation because the village hosts a website that uses the same name as an international brand of mineral water. A judicial battle for website begins, that quickly turned in to a media circus. Thus the residents of this small village, who are not even sure what the internet is, are forced defend their website and their villages honour.

Mariana is a 17 year old girl, who, after being rapped by drug addict, finds out she's pregnant and, in her path, discovers how difficult it can be entering adulthood.

Episodes from throughout the entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a conscripted student of history recounts them to his fellow soldiers while they march through an African colony in revolt during 1973.

Redheaded twins Armando and Beatriz always dreamed of being firefighters but during a rainy, uneventful winter they find themselves spending less time putting out infernos than they do helping neighbors who’ve locked themselves out of their apartments. This is how Armando meets a pretty young woman with whom he begins a tentative courtship. But soon a rift grows between the siblings and, spurred by Armando’s exaggerated stories about his nascent relationship, Beatriz begins experiencing aural hallucinations that can only be remedied through music and, finally, the love of a stranger. Pinto made this impassioned fairy tale as part of a series of films about the four elements. - FilmLinc

Macau 1897. Life is easy for Portuguese settlers. Young reveler Francisco Frontaria is deemed as irresponsible for all his partying and boozing. Shunned and exiled for crossing a line by insulting the daughter of a prominent family, he finds himself penniless and vagrant.

The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa.

On an isolated Portuguese island, a nameless man makes a mental journey which brings him into contact with the strange and menacing world without peace and harmony.

Miguel (Luis Miguel Cintra) is lucky that his income will only level off if he neglects his business as a financier, and his wife and family will be well supported. Why? Because he has begun hearing noises that no one else hears, noises that bother him a great deal, and that make it impossible for him to bear human society. His wife (Jessica Weiss) is thoroughly put out by this radically changed behavior in her formerly good husband, but though she considers leaving him, she stays by his side. Deep in the mountains, Cecelia (Rita Dias), a devout, pure young cowherd, has been brutally raped by an old man. Her boyfriend (Pedro Hestnes) has killed the rapist, and fled the area. As a result of the rape, Cecelia is pregnant. One day, while driving in the mountains, Miguel gives Cecelia's boyfriend a ride. The two of them chance upon her sitting amid the rocks with her infant baby.

No synopsis available yet.

Lisbon, early 1940s. The neutral port town is an open door to freedom, for those who are escaping the Nazi occupied France and eastern European countries, and a war field for spies of every description. Lisbon became a cosmopolitan town, where the Duke of Windsor, Primo de Rivera, Pola Negri, Leslie Howard, Walter Schellenberg and Juan Garcia are often together in the luxury hotels and night-clubs. Espionage and crime go hand in hand, despite of, or encouraged by, the Portuguese secret police.

The bandoneon player Daniel and the boxer Toni arrive independently from each other in a provincial town in Latin America where they are booked to perform at a folk festival. Both of them are completely apolitical but are forced by external circumstances to take a political position. Toni falls in love with the daughter of an influential attorney but has to keep his love a secret. Meanwhile, Daniel learns about the atrocities committed by the Junta from the town’s residents.

A Dutch woman visits a girlfriend in Portugal, but first spends a few days in a deserted villa by the sea. In flashbacks it becomes clear that her life is dominated by fear. She slowly starts to bring more order to her existence.

A film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel "Hard Times" set in a Portuguese industrial town of the 1980s.

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.

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.

Dona Elvira promises to get a job from José through the typical Portuguese wedge. In parallel, they are bizarre aspects and eccentric figures of the city life, including the tragedy of the actress Maria Alves.

Ambulatory history, freely inspired by Georg Büchner's biography (1813-37) and the reasons that led him first to political intervention and then to strict isolation. With students of unidentified present time (1968? 1970?), the themes developed, in Büchner, are triggered by the publication of "The Messenger of Hesse", a pamphlet addressed to the peasants, urging them to revolt. Their misunderstanding, as well as the repression of the young revolutionaries, leads Büchner to a particularly skeptical and painful attitude...

In Africa, during the colonial war, a patrol is lost in the bush and a soldier dies in operation. Twelve years later, in Portugal, the soldier family meets in peace.

Director Jorge Silva Melo has developed a viable, though highly intellectual mystery story about the world of art and culture and murder in this somewhat theatrical presentation. When German artist Bernd Hoffmann (Michael König) arrives in Lisbon to oversee the installation of his paintings in a joint exhibition with another Berlin artist, Hanna Brauer (Charlotte Schwab), Hanna never shows up. Hoffmann is puzzled because he is certain he saw a video sequence with Hanna at the exhibition, and he begins to look for her. Another Lisbon cultural center, a theater, is also having problems that may or may not be related -- and the mystery deepens when Hanna is found dead, either by her own hand, or murdered.

A man finds a mansion with a strange inhabitant.

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.

Luís - ex-student in Lisbon and ex-combatant in Africa - finds, after returning, Maria, secretary who has a relationship with António. He lives in a palace with his children, two old aunts and a Dominican friar, a former missionary.

Adaptation of a Portuguese traditional tale. A travelling man rests at a inn. While sleeping, three beautiful women tell him where to go, the black islands, where he can find them and marry the one that is a princess.

The film of a performance of a selection of cabaret comedy sketches by Karl Valentin, with Jorge Silva Melo as stage director. The show was a complete success and has become almost legendary. Solveig Nordlund shot it, adding some more sketches that weren’t included on the show.

No synopsis available yet.

First collective film by the students of the inaugural class of the National Conservatory’s Film School, never completed. Starring Luís Lucas, the action takes place in a laundromat (Lavimpa self-service). Each scene is said to have been directed by a different student (among them Monique Rutler, Paola Porru, Jorge Loureiro, and Luís Grenha).

No synopsis available yet.