Movies: João Matos

On his deathbed, his royal highness Alfredo, King without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories and the time he dreamt of becoming a fireman. The encounter with instructor Afonso from the fire brigade, opens a new chapter in the life of th...

Ana was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ruled by religion and traditions. Growing up as the middle child of a family of three with her mother and grandmother. Early Ana realized that girls and boys were given differe...

This film tries to make a silent record of the arrival of an economy of scale, its flows, and its effects upon the transformation of an island’s physical and human landscape....

The couple Laura and Israël have a five-year-old son, Lucas. They live together but seem to have lost interest in one another's thoughts and cares. Their relationship seems headed for the rocks, and the only one who seems to still be looking for some...

A young woman struggles to overcome lost love, unplanned motherhood and ghostly apparitions....

In order to reflect upon current practices of political dissent, we delve into the past and follow the experiences of a young artist. Invited to go underground in Portugal, during the second half of the 20th century, Margarida Tengarrinha played an i...

One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organize to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts wit...

Two young Portuguese women try to put down roots in Brazil. Teresa is newly arrived; Francisca has been there a while. This sure-footed, loving portrait of two counterparts, attracting and repelling, is also an ode to Belo Horizonte: a city with no t...

Just released from prison, Léa returns home to the Brasilia favela of Sol Nascente and joins up with her half-sister Chitara, the fearless leader of an all-female gang that steals and refines oil from underground pipes and sells gasoline to a clandes...

The Forensic Psychiatric Hospital is a medium-security level, closed structure, with a rehabilitation component. The service provided includes psychiatric, psychological, medical, therapeutic and social care. The 32 men who inhabit the unit were cons...

In 2020, unable to travel, Ico Costa left a small camera with Ailucha and Domy, two young Mozambicans from the city of Inhambane, and asked them to film their daily lives. The result: working, playing, walking, hanging around, smoking, listening to m...

A dive, the midday sunlight filtering down through the water. The air in her lungs has to last until she can dislodge the abalone. Dives like these have been carried out in Japan for over 2000 years by the Ama-San....

Shooting on 16mm film in Mozambique, director Ico Costa explores the textures of human behaviour as he follows young men who wonder what lies beyond their immediate surroundings. In the fragments of conversations captured in the Maputo market, a reco...

The National Ballet of Portugal is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Since its foundation, it has aimed to present the great classics, as well as to always welcome contemporary creations. Day-to-day life is demanding for dancers, choreographers, musi...

In 1974, after years of civil war, the Portuguese and their descendants fled the colony of Angola where groups working for independence gradually claim their territory back. A tribal girl discovers love and death when her path crosses that of a young...

A woman and two dogs inside a city house. She rediscovers herself in daily gestures and in the remembrance of whom has left. The sun blinds her, it becomes fierce, and like death, she cannot look it in the eye - only to the shadows around her...

When her mother dies, 40-year-old Helena now has time for herself after years of taking care of her family. She works at a film production company, dances boisterously, gets drunk. A quiet film about letting go morphs into a coming of middle age stor...

They all say that you killed an Angel. Who says that ? They. It’s not an Angel. It isn’t ? No. It’s a rare bird, just like you and me....

Karlon, born in Pedreira dos Húngaros (a slum in the outskirts of Lisbon) and a pioneer of Cape Verdean creole rap, runs away from the housing project to which he had been relocated....

At 63 years old and almost retired, Joaquim is forced to follow job centre rules so he can collect unemployment benefits. Despite knowing that he will never return to active life, he must go from company to company asking for stamps to attest that he...