Pedro Efe

Liberdade para José Diogo

The film documents two phases of an incident occurred in Portugal, during the 1974 revolution. In September 30, 1974, José Diogo, a tractor driver, kills his boss, Columbano Líbano Monteiro, after being dismissed from his job, when he claimed his right to work. He is imprisoned in Beja, Alentejo, and he is freed until prossecution. The courts are reluctant to judge him, because of the social unrest and the political aid Diogo is receiving from trade unions and political parties. A crowd will disrupt the court, in Tomar, and conduct a popular judgement in the hall of the tribunal, deciding to free Diogo, and condemning the boss, posthumously, for dismissing his employee and attacking him. The case became a law case study since then.

Goodbye Princess

Mitó lives in a small village and is the son of the local Comunist Party leader, she is 18 years-old and is about to graduate from the high-school she must attend at Beja - the nearest town. News that she killed her German boyfriend, at 4 a.m. on a desert road, do not excite much the editor of a Lisbon newspaper. He sends in a tyro reporter, Joaquim Peixoto, just in case. The young man, already considered hopless in his profession, will uncover more than a sex scandal to be used for political purposes. Written by Artemis-9

The Circle

A look at the urban society of the seventies. The story of Marta a young and pretty girl, who leaves her husband to search for her true identity. She doesn't quite know what she wants, but at least she knows what she's escaping from. Soon she encounters financial difficulties and finds herself involved with shady characters, a situation that leads to a mysterious murder. The net closes around her.

Past and Present

This is an intriguing avant-garde look at what motivates the leisurely classes in Portugal, for better or worse, by director Manoel de Oliveira. Set in a spacious country home peopled with a wide-ranging cast of characters, the drama begins as the friends of a widow come to console her on the loss of her husband. But at one point, the widow goes upstairs, encounters her husband, and is faced with his accusations about the past. This event and others provide the means of revealing the petty, self-serving, egocentric, and romantic pursuits of the melange of people in the house. - Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Jaime

A woman takes her young son, leaves her husband and moves in with her lover. The boy, desperate to get his parents back together, becomes convinced that if only he can get his father's stolen motorcycle back everything will be fine again, so he sets out to get enough money to buy his father a new one.

Fátima

1917, a beautiful apparition of Our Lady forever alters the lives of three children: Lucinda, Jacita and Francisco who lived in Villa Fatima in Portugal.

A Estrangeira

The shady side of an Italian textile trade in northern Germany is the subject of this slow-paced but atmospheric drama featuring Alberto Sordi as Totonno, a low-level, petty criminal anxious to move up a somewhat crooked ladder. Rising to the rank of the "dons" -- Don Raffaele (Carmine Ippolito) or Don Gennaro (Pasquale Cenammo) -- is not an easy task, as Totonno is about to find out. In the meantime, Paula (Belinda Lee) provides a romantic distraction, and another would-be entrepreneur opts for the straight and narrow. This uneven feature offers some colorful performances but the sum is less convincing than its parts.

A Raia dos Medos

The House of the Spirits

A rancher, his clairvoyant wife and their family face turbulent years in South America.

In the White City

Fed up with the sea, Paul, a Swiss mechanic working in the noisy bowels of a merchant ship, lands in Lisbon.