Alexander David

Miracles still happen—or so they say… What is the place of the sacred in the contemporary world? Looking again at a myth that haunts us, that of Saint Anthony of Lisbon (and also of Padua), through the timeless painting of Goya, 13 Alfinetes is a story of love, revenge, and blood. It begins with a reenactment of an episode supposedly occurring in medieval Lisbon, filtered through the cosmopolitan 18th-century Madrid, and returning to Lisbon today, where miracles, in truth, no longer happen.

Three Portuguese queer short films brought together in a program that charts an alternative path through converging universes, forming a new constellation of desires, fears, and struggles. Entre a Luz e o Nada by Joana de Sousa, Sob Influência by Ricardo Branco, and Uma Rapariga Imaterial by André Godinho are three cinematic gestures that explore techniques and narratives from science fiction to horror, seeking new ways to view and imagine other possibilities. After traveling through various festivals, these films can now be experienced together, in a mutual exploration of mysterious worlds, unsettling dreams, and singular visions.

On a secluded island lives an autonomous community of children who don’t speak, communicating only in gestures. Guided by the eldest among them, they operate like an agrarian commune with strict rules and beliefs. Adults are banished into the surrounding woods, and every year, the oldest member of the village is sent to jump off a cliff – a ceremony that is believed to bestow eternal youth on the chosen one. This way of life is threatened when one adventurous child heeds the call of the forbidden forest.

Laura is on a vacation with her friends for the weekend in a luxurious and isolated house. The group decide to do a hallucinogenic drug and seem to become absorbed by their nature surroundings. However, after a strange encounter at night, Laura is having trouble facing reality.

Bound by a silent pact, five students make a secret trip to the country for what seems to be an initiation ceremony. In threatening landscapes and abandoned ruins, they submit to the strange rituals of their leader, the Dux.

Gabriel Abrantes and Alexander Melo deconstruct the 1st section of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew as a playful, vibrant ode to bacchanalia, classicism and homoeroticism.

Alberto is 40 years old and lives with his mother in an apartment complex where he works as a concierge. One day, a circus group settles near Alberto’s residence, disturbing his everyday life and awakening his forgotten desire for independence and freedom.

How happy and proud they are those two ladies back in Oporto! Thanks to them, their bright nephew can study medicine in Lisbon and may already have become a doctor. Little do they know, not only Vasco wastes all his time drinking, dancing and picking up girls but he has just failed his final exam! And in that same day, he receives an email from the two aunts announcing their visit to Lisbon! Will he be able to make them believe he is such a good student as they think?

Tradition says that on 13 June, Saint Anthony’s Day (the national holiday of Lisbon’s patron), lovers must offer small vases of basil with paper carnations and flags with popular poems as a token of their love.

Mariana is a young woman looking to fulfill the dream she was once committed with when she left her parents’ house to live with Alex, in Lisbon. When he leaves to New York, she cannot bear what has been left for her. Even though the return seemed unthinkable, she goes back to the North. The burden of failure and the crossing of a legendary river, lead her to an ancient tale: once you cross the river of forgetfulness, your own past will also be forgotten. Alex returns while she is searching for a new setting for herself. He no longer believes in this country. She has gotten closer to the place where everything has started for her. He will leave. She will not return.

No synopsis available yet.

He came from the city and is trying to fit in the countryside – Alentejo. His life is dedicated to picking raspberries, hunting and taking swims in the canal. She is passing through and comes from the world he wanted to leave behind. One day they meet and their attraction is immediate. But their natures prevail over all else: she is free and he's a hunter.

A headlong dive into the deepest, silliest recesses of Abrantes’s unconscious.

A transgender woman attempts to rehabilitate her younger, drug-addicted boyfriend while also dealing with her ne’er-do-well son, a soldier who’s gone AWOL.

In a dystopian future where survival of all life on the planet depends on the ragged remnants of what used to be the Amazon rainforest, eco-activist couple Rob and Ryan acknowledge the fact that their mission to save humanity from extinction is doomed. Leaving the rainforest behind, they and adopt little Sasha, born of a young woman who rented her womb for money only to die giving birth. Forced to look straight into the cynicism and selfishness of their choices, while Apocalypse rages around them, Rob and Ryan must finally face their own contradictions without hypocrisy.