Known for Acting
West, end of the summer. Laura works at the pear harvesting, a family business. During the afternoon, Carol arrives at the village to spend a few vacation days with her friends. That night, when Laura catches them stealing pears from one of her father’s orchards, her friend confronts her about her true intent.
Adaptation of Miguel Torga's iconic short stories. An intimate look at a rural community in the 1940s. Each chapter has its own protagonist, whose existence is untouched by modernity or the outside world. Five portraits of humble lives with enormous resistance to suffering - and a capacity for violence that, at times, proves impossible to repress.
The story of Luizinha, a girl born into a very poor family who is given by her father to António, the richest man in town, to raise her. But the death of his wife leads António to marry Berta for the second time, and it soon becomes clear that the large family home is too small to accommodate both Luizinha and her stepmother. At the height of the conflict, António defends his daughter and Berta files for a contentious divorce. Shortly afterwards, she is found dead and António is accused of murder. But the truth that the court seeks to uncover may not be the most obvious one.
A hotel by the northern shore of Portugal welcomes its guests over the weekend. A man is torn between being present for his wife and the space that his mother takes up between the two of them. A mother encourages her daughter’s marriage to enable her own love affair with her son-in-law. Another mother lives through her daughter, preventing her from making her own decisions. Three families at the end of their cycles of acceptance.
In a family-run hotel, by the Portuguese northern shore, lives a group of women from different generations of the same family, whose relationships with each other have grown poisoned by bitterness. They try to survive in the declining hotel, as the unexpected arrival of a granddaughter to this oppressive space stirs trouble, reviving latent hatred and piled-up resentments.
A pagan tradition in a village in the countryside of Portugal leaves painful traces in a group of young teenagers. 25 years later, when they meet again, the past resurfaces and tragedy sets in.
We are in 1320, in the newly formed country we call Portugal. Isabel, the Holy Queen, is the wife of Dinis, the king, and mother of Afonso, the heir, both involved in a civil war that affects everyone.
