
Production
Sandro Aguilar
Portugal
He was born in Portugal in 1974. He studied Film at the Higher Education School of Theatre and Cinema and, in 1988, he was one of the founders of the production company O Som e a Fúria. His short films Corpo e meio, A serpente, Arquivo, Mercúrio and Voodoo, as well as his only feature film, A zona, were screened at the focus on his work held by Bafici ’11.
Acting credits
Behind the camera
6.5Fragments of spaces, buildings and structures, memories and remains of past eras, places of work or leisure now inhabited by our memories alone, or really forgotten. Dead things or living proof of time, natural elements, and human predators themselves.
Ruins
2009
4.8A couple in a car, things aren't going well.
Mercúrio
2010
4.8A couple in a car, things aren't going well.
Mercúrio
2010
7.0Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.
Tabu
2012
5.0Lisbon, 1980s, Rosa, a woman joins a group of young people disappointed at the post-Revolutionary Portugal. Part of a far-left clandestine armed organization, they share political views and a daily life that makes them grow closer. But their idealism collides head-on with a changing country and a large-scale police operation targeting them. Fleeing on a road with no return and no way forward, their existence is made up of bank robberies, bombs, friendships, prison, love and death. Trapped, their only choice is to keep on the run until they get arrested or killed.
Projecto Global
2026
7.1Suellen is a toll booth attendant who starts using her job to help a gang of thieves steal watches from people driving to the coast. But only for a noble cause: to send her son to an expensive gay conversion workshop.
Toll
2023
4.5Gaspard, 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
6.5A journey through the real history and the tales of a region in southern Portugal and a portrait of the people who have lived there, weaving together accounts of rural workers and field notes of archaeologists, amateur footage and scientific drawings, legends, poems, and songs.
The Seasons
2025
NRIn a distant past, Léon and Elvira Berthelini, itinerant artists, make their living hopping from town to town. In Covarronca, harassed by the Police Commissioner, they are forced to spend the night out in the open. That’s when they meet Stubbs, a young Cambridge student, with whom they find shelter in the home of a painter at odds with his wife. In return for the hospitality, they remind their hosts that the love of art resolves the art of love. Meanwhile, an unusual curse sends them on absurd journeys into the 21st century, where the future of social security and of a rock band are at stake.
Providence and the Guitar
2026
6.0All sympathetic magic is based upon two principles: the first called the Law of Similarity says that “likes produce likes,” or that an effect resembles its cause; the second, called the law of contagion or contact says that all things having been in contact with each other continue to react upon one and another at a distance even after they have been severed or disconnected. A fearful man meets a disquiet woman. Do you believe in magic?
Voodoo
2010
6.0All sympathetic magic is based upon two principles: the first called the Law of Similarity says that “likes produce likes,” or that an effect resembles its cause; the second, called the law of contagion or contact says that all things having been in contact with each other continue to react upon one and another at a distance even after they have been severed or disconnected. A fearful man meets a disquiet woman. Do you believe in magic?
Voodoo
2010
6.0All sympathetic magic is based upon two principles: the first called the Law of Similarity says that “likes produce likes,” or that an effect resembles its cause; the second, called the law of contagion or contact says that all things having been in contact with each other continue to react upon one and another at a distance even after they have been severed or disconnected. A fearful man meets a disquiet woman. Do you believe in magic?
Voodoo
2010
NRThe mountain burns in the August heat. A firefighter falls, swallowed by the ground. The broken body survives as it can. Outside, the night descends.
Soil
2012
In the year when cinema was paralyzed in Portugal due to lack of funding, a group of friends embarks on a mysterious expedition to see wolves in their natural habitat, but ends up being trapped in a house without much to do. The night goes by and the expedition’s main goal seems increasingly compromised until the biologist who promised them adventures shows up.
Friends after Dark
2016
5.0A young adolescent, living with a swinger couple in a campsite, meets an emotionally unstable man and finds herself fascinated by his special powers.
Bunker
2015
5.0A young adolescent, living with a swinger couple in a campsite, meets an emotionally unstable man and finds herself fascinated by his special powers.
Bunker
2015
5.0A young adolescent, living with a swinger couple in a campsite, meets an emotionally unstable man and finds herself fascinated by his special powers.
Bunker
2015
7.7On a remote volcanic island that everybody wants to leave, little Nana learns to stay. Her mother, Nia, went into exile right after she was born and Nana grows up in the family of her father. One day, the family learns that Nia is ill. Nana begins to develop high fevers and is sent to the foot of a volcano for treatment. There she encounters a world steeped in magical realism, between dreams and reality. Later, when Nana is a teenager, her mother Nia finally returns to the island.
Hanami
2025
NRBefore and after a kiss
Undisclosed Recipients
2015
6.0Mariana is an 11 years old girl coming from Serpa who just moved to Lisbon with her father. The first days are spent in the city cleaning the house and knowing the new neighborhood, Entrecampos. After the first day of school, Mariana gets lost coming home and has to call her father for help. The next day, she becomes friends with a boy in her class, Nicholau, and his older brother, Simão. The two brothers invite Mariana for lunch and help her to get home.
Entrecampos
2013
I am what persists. I shall turn myself into the serpent that no man knows, that no god can see.
The Serpent
2005
6.9Every 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.
Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One
2015
7.0Everything threatens to crack and yet this devouring march happened long ago in the past. There is no moaning in the room next door, the wind has stopped blowing on the stairs, the air particles throw themselves against each other, but it’s only void against void.
Remains
2002
No synopsis available yet.
Cadáver Esquisito
1997

