A Poorly Told Story (2025)

After Everything

Besieged by writer’s block and the crushing breakup with Tessa, Hardin travels to Portugal in search of a woman he wronged in the past – and to find himself. Hoping to win back Tessa, he realizes he needs to change his ways before he can make the ultimate commitment.

The Soft Skin

Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married to Franca and father of Sabine. He starts a love affair with air hostess Nicole, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stay away from her.

The Russia House

Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.

Futuro Beach

Donato fails in his attempt to save a drowning man, and meets one of the man's friends. He decides to start his life over, but pieces of his past keep coming after him.

Flucht aus Lissabon

After a failed Interpol operation, Tom Fährmann, human rights activist and escape agent, is tasked with finding Sofia Moreno, a whistleblower who has disappeared in Lisbon, and bringing her to a safe house on the Portuguese coast. When Fährmann realizes that Sofia's eight-year-old son Noa is in the hands of a hacker organization that the programmer wanted to fight with her filter program against fake news, his assignment turns into a rescue mission in which Fährmann can no longer trust anyone.

Lisbon

For Capt. Robert John Evans, smuggling black-market goods is nothing out of the ordinary. But one day he's hired by Aristides Mavros for a more involved assignment -- sneaking an imprisoned American out of communist-controlled territory. The job seems challenging enough, but when he meets the prisoner's sultry wife, Sylvia, he realizes his mission comes with a startling catch: Not only must he rescue this man, he must bring him back from the dead.

A Shot in the Dark

A baby is kidnapped in a Brazilian airport. Years later, the mother lives in Lisbon and works in a strip-tease bar so she can survive. When she is fired, she joins a gang of bank robbers...

Zus & Zo

In this Oscar-nominated comedy, three wacky sisters try to save their inheritance from their supposedly gay brother, who suddenly appears with a fiancé in tow. If he gets married, their father's will stipulates that he gets the family hotel in Portugal. So the sisters put aside their personal differences and set out to stop the wedding at all costs.

Blood Curse

An urban family inherits an old country house located in a small village. Upon their arrival they try to adapt to the new lifestyle, but they soon learn that the village is overshadowed by superstition and mysterious folklore. As they are plagued by strange events, they learn more about the history of their family, and slowly begin to believe by inheriting the house, they also inherited a curse.

Cockles and Muscles

Crustacés et coquillages is a fresh French comedy film with numerous surprise turnarounds and about the tolerance of a family of four. The family spend an idealistic summer vacation together where each of the family members gets involved in a new or old relationship.

Lisbon Story

Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.

Black Cloaks

The great fadista, Amelia Rodrigues, made her screen debut in Capas Negras, which took its name from the black capes worn by the students in the university city of Coimbra, where the film is set. The action begins in a tavern where a group of former students are reminiscing about their time at the university. One of the students, Jose Duarte then breaks into song, performing an impromptu fado in the local Coimbra style. The tavern owner's niece, the aptly named Maria Lisboa promptly retaliates with a fado of the Lisbon variety. The melodramatic plot then centers on the frustrated romance between these two characters, and the soundtrack is essentially a musical duel between these two different styles of Portugal's national song.

The State I Am In

Clara and Hans are left-wing terrorists who have been sought by police for almost fifteen years. Their increasingly rebellious daughter Jeanne begins to pose a threat to their security when she falls in love with a boy she meets on the beach.

The Ninth Gate

A rare book dealer finds himself at the heart of a string of paranormal events when he is hired to find the last two copies of a text, The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, capable of summoning the Devil.

Os Três da Vida Airada

A typesetter is an amateur stage director, and his niece and an employee are stage actors. When they have an opportunity to go professional, differences arise between the two men. Things get worse when the employee starts seeing the girl even when there is no need for rehearsals - and the uncle opposes their relationship.

Saint George

In 2011 Portugal began the so-called "year of the Troika" (EU, IMF and ECB budget cuts and economic restructuring), with the level of debt among the Portuguese people reaching staggering amounts and a growing number of families and companies unable to repay their installment loans. Jorge is an unemployed boxer on the verge of losing his son and his wife, who has decided to return to Brazil. As a means of paying off his debt and persuading his wife to remain in Portugal, Jorge accepts a job with a debt-collection agency, which will drag him into a world of violence and crime.

The Conspirators

A guerilla leader falls in love with a mysterious woman in World War II Lisbon.

Adventures of Don Juan

Spanish Lothario Don Juan, the legendary lover and adventurer returns to Spain following a scandal and comes to the aid of his queen, who is under threat from sinister forces.

The Fortunate Ones

Algarve, late 90s. Following the death of her grandmother, Milene - a strong young woman full of life despite a slight mental handicap - divides her life between her family of notables and a Cape Verdean family that keeps her going, whom she met when her grandmother died. The wind that whistles in the cranes plunges us into the world of two families against the backdrop of Portugal's recent past.

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.

Storm Over Lisbon

A nightclub star helps trap an enemy agent on the trail of an American newsman.

Sunbeat

Gabriel and Iris head back to their family holiday home in Portugal with their daughters Emma and Zoé, a couple of adorable six-year-old twins, for a vacation. In the heart of the sun-drenched countryside, as the little ones swim and laugh, the couple’s past begins to rear its head. Emma is overwhelmed by a secret that is simply too big for her to keep, and which she has no right to share with her twin sister.

What's New About Love?

Six friends meet every evening in a basement to make music. During the daytime, however, there are no rehearsals for what life brings us. Each endeavour leaves its mark. Rita left Ricardo, Rafael found her, but she still feels lost. Eduardo thought he no longer liked Maria, but after what he has done he cannot turn the clock back. João lacks the courage to breakup with his girlfriend and takes refuge in the song he is writing for Inês. Marco struggles to get another young man’s love, but he is under no illusions. Samuel believes in everlasting love but something is wrong because his friends haven’t heard from him for sometime. Inês, attempting to feel safe, likes to experiment and she's waiting to see how things go with João. With all this going on, how could the band not be falling apart...?

The Portuguese Nun

A young French actress in Lisbon to shoot a movie is intrigued by a nun she sees kneeling in the chapel where she is filming.

Florbela

Shaken by a divorce in the 1920s, Portuguese poetess Florbela Espanca uses her writing to deal with her tumultuous relationship with men, eroticism and love.

In Vanda's Room

An unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but taking as main focus the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte.

Die Screaming Marianne

After their parents divorce, one daughter lives with her mother in England while the other lives with her father in Portugal. After the untimely death of her mother, the one daughter stands to inherit a large sum of money and also a number of documents containing information that will incriminate her father, who was a crooked judge. While her father wants the documents, her sister wants the money and they will each stop at nothing, even murder, to get what they want.

The Courtyard of the Ballads

A portrait of the relations between neighbours in a Lisbon courtyard. A story made of small episodes of humour, friendship, rivalry, love.

O Costa d'África

Costa is travelling from Africa to London, and wishes very much to his nephew Amadeu, and see by himself how well he has been invested large sums of money he is been sending him. Amadeu 'borrows' for 24 hours a wife, a villa, a car, and a servant - for he has been lies to his uncle all the time. All goes well. But, Costa decides to prolong his stay for two weeks...

Recollections of the Yellow House

Lisbon, 1989. A middle-aged poor man, tormented by an illness, lives in a cheap room in a family boarding house, in the old section of the city's waterfront.

The Last Run

A former mob getaway driver from Chicago has retired to a peaceful life in a Portuguese fishing village. He is asked to pull off one last job - to drive a dangerous crook and his girlfriend to France.

The Lion from Estrela

Anastácio lives in Lisbon and is fanatic for Sporting CP, one of the city's football teams. When the team travels to face Porto, he follows it with the family, staying in house of his friend, Mr. Barata, pretending to be rich.

Fado, a Singer's Story

Ana Maria loves a modest guitar player, Júlio; when she herself in a 'retiro' (typical fado tavern), public and critics rend major applause. Fame brings about new friends, namely bohemian young who play and sing the fado with her, and not so young men but who rich and powerful enough to patronize her, promote her, and wish to become intimate with her. Júlio the guitarist feel betrayed, and he sets his mind to depart to the African colonies, to leave her forever. Knowing that he's going to embark, Ana Maria's heart between her first love, and the appeal of the rich and famous.

A Menina da Rádio

Geninha and Fortunato are couple who loves music. He's a good songwriter, she sings well. Despite this, their parents hate each other and do not seem willing to allow their marriage, nor the creation of a local radio for them.

Aldeia da Roupa Branca

Gracinda, a young laundry washer, lives with her godfather, "Uncle" Jacinto, and together they run a family business, doing the laundry for residents of Lisbon in their small village in the outskirts of that city (Canecas). Unfortunately, the business is not going very well, but that changes when Gracinda decides to go to the city to try to convince Chico, "Uncle" Jacinto's son, with whom she is in love, to return to the village and give new life to the business. The village is preparing for the annual festivities and a dispute erupts between "Uncle" Jacinto and his business rival , the widow Quiteria, when each of them invites different bands to play at the same time during the party and dances

No, or the Vain Glory of Command

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.

Ramiro

Ramiro is a bookstore owner in Lisbon and a poet in perpetual creative block. He lives, somewhat frustrated, somewhat conformed, between his shop and the tavern, accompanied by his dog, his faithful drinking companions and his neighbors: a pregnant teenager and her grandmother recovering from a stroke. He would gladly continue living this quiet and somewhat anachronistic routine if events worthy of a soap opera did not invade his bubble.

The Tyrannical Father

While rehearsing the annual play, a clerk tries to regain the attention of his beloved, in a comedy of equivoques.

Tabu

Lisbon, 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.

Life Is Beautiful

Antonio is a retired aviator in an unnamed country ruled by a military junta which violently suppresses any free thought. He falls in love with a member of the resistance against the dictatorship. He is arrested but escapes with his love. The code word among the resisters is: ‘Life is Beautiful’.

O Grande Elias

When Mr. Elias discovers that his aunt, who lives in Brazil, comes to visit him, he decides to temporarily occupy the house of a wealthy neighbor who's away so that she doesn't discover that he's not as rich as he told her.

The Girl Next Door

The story of how the conflicting relationship of Eduardo and vaudeville actress Isabel is affected by the passion he feels for their neighbor, Mariana, a young overprotected, and the unexpected visit of his uncle Plácido, a moral teacher.

Poor Things

Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, a young woman runs off with a lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

Until Tomorrow, Comrades

Portugal, 1944. In a country oppressed by a brutal dictatorship, there are those who resist and mobilize the people to fight for bread and freedom, even if it cost them prison, torture or their lives.

Timeless

Uncertain whether his bus will arrive, a hesitant and anxious young man begins to question the point of waiting. As he stands at the bus stop, his interactions with those who arrive lead him to reflect on the passing of time and how he should face it.