Movies: João Pedro Bénard

In 1917 Burma (now Myanmar), a British diplomat is set to marry his fiancée, but after a sudden panic, escapes to Singapore, sending her on what evolves into a chase across Asia....

1907. Afonso, a doctor, arrives at Principe Island to cure servants from a cocoa plantation “infected” with Banzo, nostalgia of the slaves, who are dying from starvation and suicide. The group is confined to the forest, where Afonso decides to heal t...

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through...

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....

A man, Francisco, works in an open-pit mine. He goes to see his boss about taking the following day off. At first the boss doesn’t want to allow it as there is so much to do, but he finally concedes. The next day his daughter calls on him, a visit he...

When the child Manuel wanders into a garden that is off-limits to him, he meets an unidentified fisherman, and another boy -- the boy is actually himself several years down the road. Manuel experiences three different versions of his encounters in th...

Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures ...

The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa....

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small...

A policeman lunching with his daughter is present when a dead body washes up on shore. He investigates, leading him down a twisted and muddled path of nefarious connections reflecting, somewhat, his own life....

At the age of 71, a highly regarded writer, José Cardoso Pires, suffers a major stroke and loses his memory and the ability to relate to the rest of the world. Everybody seems to defy the famous author to write another novel that recounts this advent...

Alentejo, Portugal, 1950. In a desolate region, where the wind seems to speak, where misery and hunger reign over poorest, a desperate man takes his revenge on those who caused his ruin during the darkest night, unable to get honestly the bread neede...

Maria, a Ukrainian doctor, comes to Portugal to spend a year with Greco, her husband who is also a doctor. Upon arrival at Faro airport she is the only person from Kiev approached by agents of Immigration and Customs that lead her to a room of interr...

Diana is a young woman about to enter adulthood. She lives with her father, Gabriel, a game machine dealer, and Magdalene, the stepmother, alongside those working in a hair salon in a shopping center. One day, Diana discovers that Magdalene not only ...

Xavier returns to Lisbon after a military stint, determined to lead a meaningful life, only to find his world closing in on him....

Patrick, 20-years-old, lives in Paris with his older boyfriend. He runs a teenage pornography website, which results in a prison sentence following a raid at a party. Mário, 8-years-old, was kidnapped 12 years ago in Portugal. Patrick and Mário are t...

A largely plotless, fado-scored journey through the gloomy cobblestone streets, zombie bars, and fetid basements of a sordid harbor town populated by German-speaking sots and Portuguese guest workers. An unhappy young couple, Leni and Anton, quarrel ...

In the quietness of rural life, small disputes about the right to use a rivulet may take the proportion of a life-and-death matter.....

Director Manuel Mozos draws an intimate portrait of João Bénard da Costa, programmer, critic, actor and, for 18 years, director of the Portuguese Film Museum, who passed away in 2009....

"In the beginning of this project, I wanted to do a documentary film based on this book by Luiz Ruffato. However, I ended up doing a feature film with many links to documentary. I wanted to know what made Brazilians want to emigrate to Portugal. I ch...