Leonor Silveira

Acting

Leonor Silveira

Born 1970-10-28 · Lisbon, Portugal

Leonor da Silveira Moreno e Lemos Gomes is a Portuguese film actress who made her film debut in The Cannibals for director Manoel de Oliveira in 1988. She has appeared in most of Oliveira's films since then.

Acting credits

Retrato de Família poster
9.0

Ofelia is the daughter of photographer Miguel and of deceased circus artist Lea. When her father is hospitalised with a nervous breakdown, she decides to find out the reason and in doing so discovers the truth about the relationship between her parents and the true fate of her mother.

Retrato de Família

1991

The Uncertainty Principle poster
6.5

Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family.

The Uncertainty Principle

2002

Bad Living poster
4.8

In a family-run hotel near the northern coast of Portugal, several women from the same family, spanning different generations, live together. Their relationship, poisoned by bitterness, struggles to survive in the decaying hotel. The unexpected arrival of a granddaughter in this claustrophobic space provokes turmoil and rekindles latent hatreds and accumulated resentments.

Bad Living

2023

I’m Going Home poster
6.8

The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to. But the roles he is offered -- a flashy TV show and a hectic last-minute replacement in an English-language film of Joyce's Ulysses -- finally convince him that it's time to retire.

I’m Going Home

2001

A Talking Picture poster
6.7

A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.

A Talking Picture

2003

The Convent poster
5.3

The journey of Michael Padovic, an American professor who arrives with his wife, Helene, at a Portuguese convent where he expects to find the documents needed to prove his theory: Shakespeare was born in Spain; not in England.

The Convent

1995

As Meninas Exemplares poster
NR

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.

As Meninas Exemplares

2025

Party poster
6.5

The battle of the sexes? The forces of despair and seduction? On S. Miguel in the Azores, Rogério, a young man with old money, and his enigmatic wife Leonor host a garden party at their villa. The intriguing guests are an older unmarried couple, the philosophical and observant Irene, and Michel, a roué. While Rogério and Irene talk, Michel and Leonor go down to the sea. The conversations upset Rogério and capture Leonor's imagination. Five years later, the four dine at the villa. Michel and Leonor again leave the other two. Intentions and undercurrents are subtle. One of the four proves strong, one weak, and two must choose. Wind and rain bring down the curtain on both acts.

Party

1996

Abraham's Valley poster
7.4

Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. In her youth she marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, her father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. As time goes by she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a new lover.

Abraham's Valley

1993

Gebo and the Shadow poster
6.6

Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them.Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.

Gebo and the Shadow

2012

Christopher Columbus, The Enigma poster
5.6

A true story of a doctor and his wife who went on a journey in order to prove that discoverer Christopher Columbus was in fact Portuguese. Inspired by the book "Cristóvão Colon Era Português".

Christopher Columbus, The Enigma

2007

The Tree of Knowledge poster
4.5

Gaspard, a teenager from the suburbs of Lisbon, falls into the hands of the Ogre, a man who has made a pact with the Devil. The Ogre uses the boy to attract tourists, whom he transforms into animals and then kills. Gaspard escapes with a donkey and a dog that he has grown fond of, and in an enchanted manor, he meets the spirit of Queen D. Maria I.

The Tree of Knowledge

2025

Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl poster
6.2

On a train to Algarve, a young man recounts to a fellow passenger his past relationship with an eccentric young woman.

Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl

2009

The Divine Comedy poster
6.6

In a mental institution the patients see themselves as people like Jesus, Lazarus, Martha, Mary, Adam, Eve, Sonia, Raskolnikov, Aliosha e Ivan Karamasov, a Philosopher, a Profet, Santa Teresa d'Avila, reciting the Divine Comedy.

The Divine Comedy

1991

Wings poster
NR

It is inspired by the true story of the girls and women of a Ukrainian family forced to find rescue from the war. Although... War can never truly be escaped.

Wings

2026

The Letter poster
6.0

A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.

The Letter

1999

The Life of Mirrors poster
NR

The Life of Mirrors is one of the sections of the exhibition Luis Miguel Cintra - Small Theatre of the World. A commission by Serralves Foundation to Regina Guimarães and Saguenail, and constructed after an unpublished interview with Luis Miguel Cintra, this film is the result of a long and painstaking exercise of selecting and editing excerpts from films by Manoel de Oliveira in which Cintra participates as an actor. In this way, The Life of Mirrors is a reflective, retrospective essay film, which opens the Carte Blanche, thus establishing a gateway to Luis Miguel Cintra's cinematographic and cinephile career.

The Life of Mirrors

2025

Living Bad poster
5.6

A hotel by the northern shore of Portugal welcomes its guests over the weekend. A man is torn between being present for his wife and the space that his mother takes up between the two of them. A mother encourages her daughter’s marriage to enable her own love affair with her son-in-law. Another mother lives through her daughter, preventing her from making her own decisions. Three families at the end of their cycles of acceptance.

Living Bad

2023

No, or the Vain Glory of Command poster
6.4

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.

No, or the Vain Glory of Command

1990

Word and Utopia poster
5.8

The story of Father Antonio Vieira, a 17th-century Portuguese priest who lived in Brazil and worked for better treatment of the Indians and to abolish slavery.

Word and Utopia

2000

All the Dead Ones poster
4.6

The story of the decline of the Soares family in the final months of the 19th century. Isabel is the dying mother, and her daughters are Maria and Ana. The three women try hard to forget about their pasts in the coffee farm and face the industrial times that start to take over Brazil.

All the Dead Ones

2020

The Strange Case of Angelica poster
6.5

A photographer, Isaac, is asked by hotel owners to take portraits of their recently deceased daughter Angélica. When he looks at her through the lens of his camera, she appears to come back to life just for him. He instantly falls in love with her. From that moment, he will be haunted by Angélica day and night.

The Strange Case of Angelica

2010

Porto of My Childhood poster
6.8

Manoel de Oliveira's autobiographical documentary about returning to his hometown.

Porto of My Childhood

2001

Voyage to the Beginning of the World poster
6.7

Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.

Voyage to the Beginning of the World

1997