Cucha Carvalheiro

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.

Two sisters have kept a secret from each other for far too long. The proximity of death makes the truth a requirement for forgiveness.

It is 1979. Four young ladies are hired to form a girl band. They can sing, they shine with their dancing, and they shock the country. They become a big hit. They are DOCE.

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.

Thirty-something Vítor still lives with his mother, Fátima, in his grandmother Júlia’s apartment. Fátima is a hairdresser with a quiet disposition who, at night, fantasises about the policeman who has just moved in next door. By day, Vítor is a lowly employee on a TV show. But at night, he dons his neighbour’s uniform to win the favour and satisfy the desires of a boy he’s met online. In her retirement home, Júlia is unable to sleep at night and has long forgotten what drugs she is meant to be taking. She misses her dead husband, who manifests himself in the body of a living friend, and gets involved in her daily activities. Through these characters, Diogo Costa Amarante constructs a fascinating portrait of lives lived while desires remain unrealised.

A Widow who records her dreams is unable to sleep until her husband returns home.

The hypochondriac Sebastião and his not so normal family must save the country from the prime minister's plan of selling the country to China, Germany, France and Angola, and show that Portugal is not for sale.

Ulisses and Ermelinda Melo are surprised when they receive the news that an old friend of his mother is going to visit them. After an embarrassing first encounter, the nervousness of Ermelinda is exacerbated with the cold behavior of the guest.

Alfredo Loureiro, a carpenter by trade, never knew any other passion in life besides his craft. Women intimidated him, so he spent more time avoiding them than courting them. But all it took was one glance at Emília's smile for everything to change. At 78, Alfredo discovers true love and will do anything to experience this feeling, which had been unknown to him his entire life.

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.

Luís hates Christmas. In the hospital where she is a doctor, she always offers herself to work for 24 hours in the emergency room on the 24th and 25th of December. When everything gets ready to be another bitter and solitary Christmas, a homeless is taken to the emergency room apparently with a pneumonia, despite refusing treatment. When Luís intervenes, she ends up recognising his father in the homeless man, with whom she cut relations circa 10 years ago.

A policeman lunching with his daughter is present when a dead body washes up on shore. He investigates, leading him down a twisted and muddled path of nefarious connections reflecting, somewhat, his own life.

Ana Catarina returns from Brazil with her father and her nanny to marry a man she doesn't know and doesn't like. A terrible coincidence happens when, on the same day, the young woman becomes a widow and an orphan, a fact that leaves her heir to an incalculable fortune and coveted by all the aristocrats in the region.

No synopsis available yet.

An intriguing story about a family and a manor house (where some terrible crimes were committed in the past by a member of that family) adapted from a novel with the same title by Tabajara Ruas.

Mitó lives in a small village and is the son of the local Comunist Party leader, she is 18 years-old and is about to graduate from the high-school she must attend at Beja - the nearest town. News that she killed her German boyfriend, at 4 a.m. on a desert road, do not excite much the editor of a Lisbon newspaper. He sends in a tyro reporter, Joaquim Peixoto, just in case. The young man, already considered hopless in his profession, will uncover more than a sex scandal to be used for political purposes. Written by Artemis-9

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.

Portugal, late 1940's. André must leave the country after running away from prison. In Oporto some friends get him a guide, Lambaça, a smuggler who knows very well the Trás-os-Montes border from Portugal to Spain.

A passion between a 42 years old man and a young girl.

Lúcia is an independent woman who lives alone in Lisbon. Her father commits suicide leaving her a message on phone recorder, revealing a letter he wrote. However Lúcia can't find it in her father's house. On that visit she ends up meeting with her mother, a known political activist with whom she has a distant and tense relationship. In hope of finding the letter, Lúcia leaves to the farm where she grew up, on an isolated location. There she reencounters Álvaro, an old childhood companion, who shares a little life time he has left between roses and the piano, and the guardian angel that follows and protects her through nocturnal wanderings.

Are the Portuguese afraid of the changes after the Estado Novo dictatorship?

In Portugal, in the 60s, the corpse of a man appears on Dog's Beach. The corpse is identified as the major Dantas, a man wanted by authorities after his escape from a military prison where he was awaiting trial for insurrection.

A bewitching combinatory adaptation of the Bluebeard tale and a 15th century Portuguese fable of a damsel who disguises herself as a knight errant.