Movies: Tiago Hespanha

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...

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....

“The most constant and deadly disease in any society is indifference.” – Abbé Pierre. In 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Lisbon’s largest sports centre is repurposed into an emergency shelter for people experiencing homelessness. Guided by Teresa...

1979. Flicking through pictures from a Soviet magazine, 15-year-old Martim dreams of building a new society. His radical communist parents send him to study at Astrakan for one year. In her new film, Catarina Mourão captures with tremendous precision...

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...

“Campo de Marte” (The Field of Mars) was in the ancient times Rome’s training arena for war. At the outskirts of Lisbon, “Campo” hosts today Europe’s largest military base. In this place military troops train fictional missions, astronomy aficionados...

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....

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...

Europe’s largest lithium mine is about to start operating in Trás-os-Montes, much to the dismay of the local inhabitants. Frederico Lopo induces an earthy sensuality and contrasts two geologies: that of mining prospection and machines, and that of r...

The Ave Valley is, for more than a century, a territory seized by an imposing industry. Amongst ruins and operating factories, we descend the river on a journey alongside the banks of the present, unveiling the marks of the past....

A portrait of a first relationship, previous to the external world, the one of the family. In a winter in Lisbon, father, mother, son and daughter trace the path of a day by themselves. A film that develops through characters who have for their antag...

Through a city that carries the weight of broken expectations and tough absencies, we follow the day of three young adults. César who got into a photoshoot by accident, Chloé who hopes to find a place to do her own work, and Helena who is back in her...

End of adolescence, end of school, the last summer before joining the working world for a group of friends from the neighbourhood of Alcoitão, "BDA"....

Estado de Excepção is a documentary about CITAC (Coimbra Theater Initiation Circle), a university theater group, revealing history since it was constituted in 1956 until the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. It is the history of the theater group uni...

The afternoon Jorge asks Mariana over for a weekend at his house in Leiria, she starts to see him in a whole new light. Unsure of her friend’s intentions, Mariana accepts his unexpected and baffling invitation....

"I've been on this cliff for almost a year, here on the lookout. Always aware of the sea and the enemy, even though I've never seen him. The man riding a horse gave me a new order, to be even more on alert, waiting for a mirage, for a ghost that will...

Somewhere in the mountains, a man lives alone in a disappearing village. Wandering through the misty nature, interpreting among the walls of his dark houses, on the very ground with his destiny to belong to a world that has been rejected....

This documentary portrait covers all the themes of Daveau’s rich life: from her field research and private life to feminism and the influence of the modern age on family relationships and science. Her passionate life is examined in detail in an inexh...

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....

Cunning and slender, harassed and on the run, Reynard is a metaphor of a never ending obsession with each breath, each gesture, each thought. Marta seeks in the emptiness of her body a way to arrive to her inner essence, in an abstract search of a fr...