Movies: Zita Duarte

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

After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live....

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 ...

This film depicts the life of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Wenceslau De Moraes by means of nine ancient ballads from China. The writer married a Chinese woman after he left his wife and family to go live in Macao. Later, he moved to Japan where...

In a unique approach to what amounts to four pseudo-morality plays, director Monique Rutler has a street entertainer with hand puppets summarize the characters and idea of each story. The first sketch is about a young man who shines shoes for a livin...

What is the nature of life? What is the nature of art? How can art influence our lives? These are the questions of this movie. The main character, a man who lives both in the world of dreams and reality, searches his past, in order to understand its ...

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 encount...

This exaggerated mockery of crime cinema tells the story of a gang lead by "Renato, o pacíficio" (Renato, the peaceful) and their attempt to steal precious jewels from the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. The weapon of choice? Bees!...

Fernanda, António and Quim are travelling by train to a provincial Portuguese industrial city. Fernanda, a teacher, agrees to replace a pregnant colleague. António is returning to the home he was forced to flee long ago, accused of setting fire to th...

World peace is at stake if a spy-ring obtains the electronic device...

This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manue...

This Portuguese drama examines the daily life minutiae and intrigues of two scions of society in the rural village where they live. One is a wealthy landowner, the other a widowed aristocrat who lives in a world of her own....

Concerns an Irish woman, Cathy (Pauline Cadell), who dearly loves her Portuguese lawyer husband, Pedro (Rui Morisson); however, unbeknownst to her, he engages in one tryst after another. Cathy soon finds herself trying to help a young delinquent get ...

Reflections on life and death through the eyes of a Medical Doctor, researcher on blood diseases, under the anguish of consulting a terminally ill young woman....

In order to make some much-needed cash for himself, 65-year-old Portuguese prison inmate Eugenio impersonates a young woman and begins a romantic correspondence with a lonely Portuguese truck-driver living in Boston, convincing him that her tragic li...

Director Jorge Silva Melo has developed a viable, though highly intellectual mystery story about the world of art and culture and murder in this somewhat theatrical presentation. When German artist Bernd Hoffmann (Michael König) arrives in Lisbon to ...

"Essay on the Military and the Power", a phrase that also belongs to the title of "Gestures & Fragments", sums up the spirit of the film, based on three points of view on the same theme: Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho and Eduardo Lourenço, in their own ro...

With a strong documentary element, "Nós Por Cá Todos Bem" mixes professional actors with the inhabitants of a small village, telling the story of a small film crew in a village living day to day....

Alentejo 1975. The Police associate a group of traveling players with a strike of agricultural workers. The action takes place in the open space and harsh heat of the Alentejo. With the connivance of Lianor, the troupe enters the palace of Don Gonza...

Lúcia is an independent woman who lives alone in Lisbon. Her father commits suicide leaving her a message on phone recorder, revealing a letter he wrote. However Lúcia can't find it in her father's house. On that visit she ends up meeting with her mo...