The best Manuel Cavaco’s movies

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

Luís - ex-student in Lisbon and ex-combatant in Africa - finds, after returning, Maria, secretary who has a relationship with António. He lives in a palace with his children, two old aunts and a Dominican friar, a former missionary.

In Portugal, in the 60s, the corpse of a man appears on Dog's Beach. The corpse is identified as the major Dantas, a man wanted by authorities after his escape from a military prison where he was awaiting trial for insurrection.

Abel, 47 years old, two wars - in the colonies and France, emigration - several scars from many battles lost, returns in a jump to Portugal, to his lost village in the northern interior, near the border, from where one day he'd be gone, also from a jump. A letter, from his brother Peter, warned him that everything changed. Even Teresa. Abel catches sight of his childhood in the village hills, the old tribe. From a distance everything seams to be in the same placesa, the old dog is all that remains of the past. In the village the Act of Passion will be performed and Teresa is one of the participants. Abel takes the old gestures and prepares his plan: eliminate one by one Teresa's suitors, to consummate during the act of the Passion, her death ...

Estefânia is an old, rich, strict catholic woman, and when she sets her eyes on a couple of servants who have no means to bring up properly their youngest son, António, she decides to move her influences in order to make a priest out of him. The parents accept it, the local priest and even the Seminar's rector accept it, and António accepts it - if not for piety, for obeyance to his parents. Once time goes by, and António is out of rural misery and into the prison-like system of a seminar, doubts and anguishes mount within him.

Twenty years ago, Henrique left Portugal for the peaceful Netherlands. A colonial war veteran, he desperately wanted to get away from his country which still defended a doomed African empire and from his traditional, landowning family. He’s back now. Everything is different. «Europe» knocked on the door and sprawled itself fast. Even the South had to face wrenching changes. And Henrique himself will have to face many events. Love affairs and dangerous threats. And the chalenge of his future.

At the end of the nineteenth century, an army force led by Major Mouzinho de Albuquerque, a cavalry officer, imprisoned in Mozambique the great regulative Governor Gungunhana, who had rebelled against Portuguese government and sovereignty

The family of Ana Luisa meets at home to celebrate her father's birthday. As the guests sit around the table they will share memories of the past, in which all have a common denominator: the late Josefa, Ana Luisa's mother. Hearing the stories, Ana Luisa realizes the impact that his late mother had on their life choices and imagines what would have happened if she had followed other paths, taken other options and said what was unsaid. At the same time, an event of unknown origin causes a change in space and time, enabling people all over the world the access to parallel universes. Ana Luisa will thus have the opportunity to change the past...

Set during the Estado Novo dictatorship, in the night of April 24, Pedro hears that the political police, PIDE, assaulted his house. Fearing of what his fate may be, Pedro runs, looking for a place to hide.

Irene is an agent for an insurance company. She is given the job of investigating the disappearance of an elderly librarian in a provincial town. During her investigations she meets a history teacher - Ricardo - who knew the librarian and is interested in local legends. Irene happens to hear about a very old medieval castle which, according to legend, has a secret entrance that opens mysteriously on Christmas night as the clock strikes twelve.

In an isolated village of the Alentejo region, a conflict arises. José Vitorino, one of the landowners of the region, rich in prehistoric monuments, wants to build a luxurious solarium in lands filled with ancient rocks, places of devotion and sacred rituals. Indifferent to the people’s protest, who believe in the magical powers of the stones and that the region’s drought is due to the rocks’ destruction, José Vitorino hires an architect to plan his new house. On christmas eve, in the middle of the winter solstice, a strange ceremony around a dolmen, once an altar for bloody sacrifices in more remote times, releases a harmful spell. A race against time to reverse the faulty charm begins.

Based on the work by Fernando Pessoa - a "message" about the destinies of Portugal - not just in isolation but looking at them as precursors and announcers of the fate of the entire planet.