Público's Best Portuguese Films
10 important Portuguese personalities chose their top 10 Portuguese films to be shown in schools. Among them were directors, poets, writers, a philosopher, an art curator, an architect and a film critic. The lists were published by the newspaper Público in April 2012.
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- DirectorPaulo RochaStarsRui GomesIsabel RuthRuy Furtado19-year-old Julio has just left the provinces to settle down in the outskirts of Lisbon. He lives in a poor area with his uncle Afonso and starts working as an apprentice shoemaker. At the shop he gets to know Ilda, a young housemaid and regular customer. Ilda is pretty, joyful, and modern, and Julio falls for her. The two young people, although very different from each other, embark on an idyll.
- DirectorFernando LopesStarsBelarmino FragosoJean Pierre GeblerMaria Teresa de NoronhaInterview with a has-been boxing champion «who could have been great», probing, and soul revealing.
- DirectorJoão César MonteiroStarsJoão César MonteiroManuela de FreitasRuy FurtadoLisbon, 1989. A middle-aged poor idiot, tormented by an illness, lives in a cheap room in a family boarding house, in the old section of the city's waterfront.
- DirectorManoel de OliveiraStarsNascimento FernandesVital dos SantosAntónio PalmaThe story takes place in the old streets of Porto and by the banks of the Douro River. A gang of very young kids has just accepted a new member, Carlitos, a shy boy who has "played it tough" by stealing a doll in a shop. Carlitos soon has a crush on Terezinha, the only girl in the group. The trouble is that Eduardo, the gang boss, is also in love with the pretty girl. And he will not allow any rival to challenge him.
- DirectorPedro CostaStarsPedro HestnesNuno FerreiraInês de MedeirosVicente, seventeen, lives with brother Nino, ten-years-old, and his ailing father in a derelict house on the outskirts of the capital. They don't seem to remember their mother, and are very much attached to their father, despite his temper, and his frequent absences from home. One day, the father leaves for good, and Vicente and Nino swear to cover it up. It's their secret. Clara, the primary school assistant, is fascinatingly beautiful, and secretive, and (may be) she knows it aswel. There are other secrets, though: the origin of the money that appears at Vicente's house; the relationship between Vicente's well-to-do uncle and his girlfriend; the relationship between the four people who once played the cards together, and now can't stand each other.
- DirectorAlberto Seixas SantosStarsLuís SantosDalila RochaIsabel de CastroA portrait of the everyday life of a typical middle-class family in parallel with the fall of the "Estado Novo", the 48-year dictatorship led by Salazar. The daughters' conflicts and frustrations with their parents, their grandmother and their maid find an obvious echo in the country's collective events. The Carnation Revolution is about to explode.
- DirectorJoão BotelhoStarsFernando Cabral MartinsAndré GomesJuliet BertoThe film was to be a documentary, but evolved during production to a fictional film. It nevertheless adheres strictly to the poems and letters exchanged by two of the most outstanding names of the Modernist Movement, Fernando Pessoa (in Lisbon) and Mário de Sá-Carneiro (in Paris). Their endless conversation was dramatically and suddenly terminated.
- DirectorManoel de OliveiraA documentary that looks at the people working in the river Douro, around the city of Porto.
- DirectorTeresa VillaverdeStarsAna MoreiraAlexandre PintoNelson VarelaThree homeless teenagers rejects struggle to survive together. Of them, Andreia is pregnant, while Pedro and Ricardo hustle, steal and are exploited by a pornographer.
- DirectorFernando LopesStarsLaura SoveralJoão GuedesZita DuarteA married couple of rich and depressed noblemen destroy the lives of their servants out of spite.
- DirectorManoel de OliveiraStarsAntónio Rodrigues SousaJoão Rocha AlmeidaAlbino FreitasJosé and Roberto are friends, and they decide to go hunting but without guns, so that no accident will happen. As they stroll and talk, one of them falls into a hole in a hidden marshland. His friend runs away, and manages to gather a number of men that were in the vicinity. They form a human chain to pull the victim out, but their affliction mounts, as they have no strategy for doing it, and they can't understand each other.
- DirectorJoão BotelhoStarsCláudio da SilvaPedro LamaresRicardo AibéoA room in Lisbon. A man dreams and establishes a theory to make it come true. This film is based on The Book of Disquiet , the posthumous work of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. It portrays the solitude of man through picturesque images and dramatic effects.
- DirectorLauro AntónioStarsEunice MuñozVergílio FerreiraCanto e CastroEstefãnia 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.
- DirectorPedro CostaStarsVanda DuarteLena DuarteZita DuarteThe film follows the daily life of Vanda Duarte, a heroin addict in Lisbon, and the community she lives in.
- DirectorAntónio Lopes RibeiroStarsVasco SantanaFrancisco RibeiroLeonor MaiaFrancisco, salesman in a shoe store, is totally in love with Tatão, which sells perfume in the same street. But he is an amateur theater actor, as she hates theater and is a fan of cinema. Will this unlikely love endure?
- DirectorJoão Mário GriloStarsCarlos DanielAurelle DoazanAntonino SolmerAt the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro.
- DirectorJosé Fonseca e CostaStarsVictoria AbrilSaul SantosArmando CortezA young man from a high-bourgeois family, Henrique receives mysterious phone calls from a woman at the barracks where he is serving in the military, which attracts him to meetings without consequences.
- DirectorManoel de OliveiraStarsLeonor SilveiraCécile Sanz de AlbaLuís Miguel CintraEma is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. Young marries Dr. Carlo Paiva, who she is not attracted to, but is her father's friend. They move to the Valley of Abraham. Carlo loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room, to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. With time she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage so, with all the freedom she has, she takes a lover.
- DirectorJosé Cottinelli TelmoStarsVasco SantanaBeatriz CostaAntónio SilvaAfter flunking in medical school, the young and bohemian Vasco need to trick his aunts, the main financers of his studies, preventing them to know that he is not a doctor.
- DirectorJoão César MonteiroStarsCláudia TeixeiraJoão César MonteiroManuela de FreitasJoão de Deus is the manager of an ice-cream shop owned by an ex-prostitute, Paraíso dos Gelados (Ice-Cream Paradise). Through a unmoved desire of perfection, he seeks, through cleansing and purity to attain heaven. The surrounding world, however, does not comply with his decaying vision of lust and decay as a way of achieving his purpose.
- DirectorJoão BotelhoStarsAna MoreiraRicardo AibéoRogério SamoraEmília de Sousa, the great 19th-century Portuguese actress, abandoned her career to marry a rich aristocrat and became the Baroness Magdalene of the Sea. As beautiful as Empress Sissi, she built a mystery that lasted four generations.
- StarsAntónio Sequeira LopesCristina HauserElsa WallencampA story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives.
- DirectorMargarida CordeiroAntónio ReisStarsAna Maria Martins GuerraManuel Ramalho EanesOctávio Lixa FilgueirasIt is a sincere and naive film that combines the themes of nature-man, modernism-man in Rilke's poets with a local narrative.
- DirectorMiguel GomesStarsSónia BandeiraFábio OliveiraJoaquim CarvalhoDocu-drama about Portuguese social life in the countryside during the busy month of August
- DirectorAntónio-Pedro VasconcelosStarsLudmila MikaëlArnaud GiovaninettiJean-Pierre CasselAt 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