Crista Alfaiate

Burma, 1917. Edward, a civil servant for the British Empire, jilts his lovestruck fiancée Molly the day she arrives to be married. As he flees into an unexpected odyssey across Asia, the free-spirited Molly-amused by his moves-follows in pursuit, embarking on a globe-trotting cat-and-mouse chase.

Crista, Carloto and João are building an airy greenhouse for butterflies in the garden. The three of them share household routines, day after day… And they are not the only ones.

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.

A contemporary reinterpretation of the tradition of pilgrimages in the Azores, historically carried out exclusively by men. In the film, a group of women make a pilgrimage to the island of Pico; along the way, one of them disappears, raising questions about their individual and collective existence as female bodies. These are bodies that literally walk to break the bubble of passivity, guided by action, ritual and resistance.

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.

After another failed attempt to get pregnant, a young couple begins to diverge in their desires. Pandemics, climate change and life’s uncertainties loom large. What does it mean to bring a child into an ever-more-complicated world? The cycles of nature and the seasons remain constant either way.

Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells King Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. As in the book, these stories are tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events.

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!

One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organize to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.

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.

A chronology of the Avenue Almirante Reis in Lisbon. Its past and present. A portrait of those that inhabit it.

In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.

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

There's a film subtitler. There's a film she must urgently subtitle. There's the plot of that film, with which she relates on a level that will remain enigmatic to us. And in that film within the film there's a main character, whose dreams are being devoured, and other characters, interested in dreams as well, but far more practical. And there¹s music, and a promise of music. Timelessly wandering through the world.

The start of Luís Rovisco’s old age isn’t exactly cheerful. Already in his sixties, he’s still roaming the country by himself, carrying out his tasks — increasingly less real — as sales director for the company SegurVale. Sadness, resignation? Not with the songs Luís makes up behind the wheel, and that take over this film from start to finish.

Some of the chapters from Arabian Nights are adapted to a modern Portugal in this epic.

Manuel bids farewell to his routine and boards a 15th century vessel under pirate law. Treason on board triggers a series of terrible events our protagonist overcomes while keeping his moral principles intact.

Rita is fifteen and spends the summer between warm afternoons of teenage love and party nights with her friend Sara. From Portugal to the South Pacific, the pleasures of this routine will take a turn when the young girl visits the art show of a new neighbor in the local community.

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.

Dodu, a fearless little cardboard boy, Camilla, an enchanting 8-year-old girl and Santa, a Father Christmas for every day, rescue Camilla’s father from the claws of the Waste Monster. As part of their adventure they recycle the wrapping paper from the Christmas presents and are able to breathe in pure air with all Sky-Forests ad Earth-Forests.

Diana is a young woman about to enter adulthood. She lives with her father, Gabriel, a game machine dealer, and Magdalene, the stepmother, alongside those working in a hair salon in a shopping center. One day, Diana discovers that Magdalene not only keeps a secret relationship with Michael, the security center and instructor in the gym of the neighborhood, as resumed his old habit of playing. Not to allow the stepmother to his father do the same as her mother had done to her, Diana decides to intervene, approaching the Magdalene lover.

Haunted by failure and loss, an actress returns to her parched homeland, where her family’s fragile reunion unravels into a search for belonging and release.