Rita Durão

Explore hidden desires on a sleepover, fall in love with the handyman and be seduced by a stranger on the beach as you discover why Love Is the Drug. Boys On Film 17 includes nine complete films: Nicholas Colia's "Alex And The Handyman" starring Keaton Nigel Cooke, Aaron Profumo, and Hogan Gorman; Dawid Ullgren's "Mr. Sugar Daddy" starring Bengt C.W. Carlsson and Aleksandar Gajic; Brendon McDonall's "Spoilers" starring James Peake and Tom Mumford; André D. Chambers's "Tellin' Dad" starring Carl Loughlin, Ricky Tomlinson, and Michael Byron; Eyal Resh's "Boys" starring Wyatt Griswold and Pearce Joza; Martin Edralin's "Hole" starring Ken Harrower and Sebastian Deery; Lorelei Pepi's animated "Happy & Gay"; André Santos and Marco Leão's "Pedro" starring Filipe Abreu and Rita Durão; and Anthony Schatteman's "Kiss Me Softly" starring Ezra Fieremans, Marijke Pinoy, and Marc Van Eeghem.

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

PLAYBACK is not just a biopic about Carlos Paião. It's a journey into the creative universe of one of the greatest geniuses of Portuguese music. Carlos studies Medicine, lives among books, exams, and expectations, but it is in the secret of melodies, words, and imagination that he finds the place where he truly breathes. In a country still discovering new sounds, he risks exchanging the security of a white coat for the uncertainty of stages, songs, and a dream bigger than himself. Between duty and desire, reason and intuition, fear and courage, Carlos builds a unique path, made of talent, humor, creative obsession, and an almost luminous urgency to leave his mark. PLAYBACK reveals not only the songs that made Carlos Paião an unforgettable figure in Portuguese music, but also the intimate universe from which they were born.

After receiving a visit from a messenger of God, João de Deus wins his buddy's girlfriend through a roll of the dice.

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.

The short life of the Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini is colourfully portrayed, not as a conventional biopic, but as a visual poem which evokes the turbulent life and complex personality of the literary heroine as she develops her genius for writing.

A story about art and educated men, and how their art and culture reveal themselves useless in the face of the harsh realities of the 20th century life.

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.

Monteiro moved far away from the visual opulence defined by his earlier films with his inspired adaptation of radical Swiss writer Robert Walser’s anti-fairy tale. Carefully restricting the image track, Monteiro maintains an almost totally black screen in order to focus instead on the voices of Snow White, the Prince, the Queen and the Hunter, engaged in an extended debate about love, free will and the events leading up to the fateful attempt on the maiden’s life. Despite its visual austerity, Snow White is haunted by the arresting images with which it begins – infamous black-and-white photographs of Walser lying dead in the snow after his heart attack outside a Swiss asylum at the age of seventy-eight, a strange realization of the “death of the author” so central to postmodern literary criticism.

A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.

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Victor is a poor and submissive man who serves his general and the palace of an aristocratic family. Haunted by the red lips of his beloved Maria, he suffers unbearable hallucinations that lead him to the great precipice of death. “Illicit Trade” explores 3 texts by Georg Büchner - "Woyzeck", "Leonce and Lena" and “The Hessian Courier". A film adaptation of the German author's literary universe that is as anachronistic as imminently actual.

A Portuguese horror and fantasy anthology.

João Vuvu, lives alone in a house that requires regeneration but due to being alone he is unable to do the work. On his son's release from prison and João's ensuing deception triggers a series of somber events.

Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.

A summer film. About summers. Two seasons splitting it apart by half a dozen years, the youth years – time it takes its characters to realise they’re getting lonely. Hellish summer ends and we’re on a little fishing village, river-side, in Lisbon’s south bank: people make life-changing decisions.

Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.

It's the dawn of April 25, 1974, when Marco, a 25-year old Italian and his Portuguese friend Victor leave Paris on a yellow Citroen 2CV. The goal of their trip is Lisbon, which on that night was freed from Europe's longest dictatorship. The two are joined by Claire, Victor's former girlfriend and University classmate, who wants to take a break from her everyday life, leaving behind her husband and baby son, to form again, even for a few days, the traveling trio with her friends.

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?

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

A child prodigy, a talented pianist, who fears the gift he was born with. A father persecuted and tormented by the infernal memory of the colonial war and a luminous mother afflicted by an incurable disease. A grandfather and grandmother in exile on a small village and an anti-Salazarist, an unrepentant traveller who settles in Buenos Aires. A music teacher who teaches his students that being a musician is not a fate of guaranteed happiness and that there is a lot of pain in the human heart. The story of a Portuguese family that lived through dictatorship, colonial war and democratic revolution - the improbable and surprising threads with which individual destinies weave the collective destiny.

Arriving in a hotel in the city of Faro, a couple learns there are no available tables left. When another couple agrees to share a table, they spark a conversation on the city’s history, unfolding the tales of King Afonso III, who betrays his wife, and of a Moorish woman, who betrays her father.

Artist/writer/director/producer Siegfried follows a street hustler/artist Sansa who makes his way from Paris to Russia using his street smarts. Sansa is charming and careless, living the bohemian life. His encounters are numerous, mostly with feminine characters, until he gets attached to an old and eccentric orchestra conductor who becomes a kind of father figure.

Teresa is a soap-opera actress. Meeting again an old passion brings her back apparently lost memories, leading her to question not only her love life but also her career options. In the studio, the daily work is spiced by the frenzy group of younger actors. After all, they all ask the same question: where does happiness lies?