UGERES
Portugal | Spain
Co-production: Bando à Parte and Miramemira
Fiction series
Director: Carlos Amaral
In the early 1980s, a coroner is called to a remote village in Gerês to carry out an autopsy on a woman who has died in bizarre circumstances.
He soon finds himself caught up in a climate of mysticism linked to the region's pagan past, haunted by masked human figures who kidnap women during Carnival. 40 years later, a Galician archaeologist investigating the pre-Roman presence in the region discovers the doctor's mutilated body. The disappearance of his assistant leads her to take over the investigation as her own, prompting him to resume the search that the doctor didn't finish.
In different decades and with a mutual help that spans time, both unravel the complex web that protects the strange tribe hidden in Gerês, ending up as victims of the masked men of Ugeres.
GOLIAS
Portugal
Production: Bando à Parte
Documentary
Director: David Almeida
David is a dwarf actor who struggles to survive in a world that wasn't made for people his size. His normal day includes problems catching lifts, opening doors or being served in shops. David works on a monologue called Goliath, the fictional story of a dwarf who travels the world in search of fame and glory. To prepare himself, David also embarks on a journey in search of people with his condition, who have made space for themselves in a world of giants.
THE SINGULAR ENCHANTMENT OF MADAM P.
Portugal | Bulgaria
Co-production: Alaz Films and Bando à Parte
Feature film fiction
Director: Sara Driver
Madame P. lives in a world that mixes dreams with reality. After experiencing the trauma of surviving a mass shooting while her colleagues around her died, she disappears into her imagination, perfectly content to live in her world of walls coming to life, figures dancing on the mantelpiece, rescuing tiny people trapped in cupcakes and looking after a ‘pet’ armadillo - a creature that adopted her after the mass shooting. Her dear ‘dead’ friend helps her on a daily basis.
Madame P. is surrounded by people who accept her mentality and don't question her sanity, until two strangers arrive, disturbing her perceived reality, but ultimately not her journey. This story brings to mind the animated films of Miyazaki and the stories of Lewis Carroll.
1978
USA | England | Portugal
Co-production: Pinball London and Bando à Parte
Documentary
Director: Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias
New York City is bankrupt, crime-ridden and literally falling apart. ‘1978’ is a documentary that looks at the cultural impact of gentrification that took place that year and changed New York City forever.
THE LAST STREET OF SAMUEL FULLER
Portugal | France | Germany | USA
Production: Bando à Parte
Documentary
Director: João Antunes
The starting point for this project is the filmed interview that João Antunes did with Samuel Fuller in Lisbon in March 1988. Thirty-five years later, rediscovering this interview by chance, he feels the desire to use this material to make a film, going in search of those who took part in the unique adventure that was the shooting of Samuel Fuller's film ‘Sreet of No Return’.
CHUVA DE GRAVANA
Portugal | São Tomé and Príncipe
Co-production: Bando à Parte and CS Prodcuções
Feature film fiction
Director: Ângelo Torres
Almost everything in São Tomé and Príncipe has two meanings, two names, like the two islands. Chuva de gravana can be positive or negative: positive because it is scarce, rare, strange and therefore exclusive. Negative because it's insignificant, weak, ineffective and therefore useless. Sabela Novo, our protagonist, leaves for São Tomé on the pretext of researching material for her master's degree: Creole languages of Galician-Portuguese origin, but her real aim is to find out about her father, whom she has known nothing about since she was three years old. Her presence on the island causes a stir among the young natives, ending in tragedy/tchiloli.
AN INVENTOR IN THE PAMPAS
Portugal/Argentina
Bando à Parte
Documentary
Director: Mário Gomes
In the midst of a personal crisis, poet Cristian Forte decides to leave Buenos Aires in search of self-taught inventor Alberto Waiman, taking an analogue camera and a VHS video camera with him. After a long bus journey, Cristian finally finds Waiman in a remote village in the Pampa. Between the marginalised poet and the hermit inventor, known in the village by the nickname ‘El Loco’, a friendly relationship gradually develops. The material that Cristian gathers during his various stays in the Pampa - photographs, videos, objects - not only documents Waiman's unique artistic work, but also serves as the basis for a unique exercise in memory and a vindication of the marginal aesthetic of so-called ‘art brut’.
SAN SIMÓN
Spain | Portugal
Co-production: San Simón, La Película AIE, Miramemira, Morelli Producciones and Bando à Parte
Feature film fiction
Director: Miguel Ángel Delgado
The island of San Simón, once a significant monastery, became a concentration camp under Franco's regime, where prisoners faced brutal repression. Research by historical memory groups and the University of Santiago de Compostela has reconstructed the lives of those imprisoned there using trials, testimonies, and records. Initially housing local detainees, the camp later received prisoners from across Spain and Portugal. Portuguese involvement—both as prisoners and guards—highlights the collaboration between the Franco and Salazar regimes, a detail the film aims to reflect through the inclusion of the Portuguese language.
THE PIONEERS
Spain | Portugal
Co-production: Pioneras la Película AIE, Cine365 Films, Nadie es Perfecto, Ciudadano Ciskul e Bando à Parte
Documentary
Director: Marta Díaz de Lope
In Spain, in the early 1970s, with Francoism still deeply rooted in society, some very young and neglected football stars and a dreamy and audacious sports promoter joined forces to break down barriers and begin what would become the history of women's football in Spain.
LAST NIGHT I CONQUERED THEBES
Spain | Portugal
Co-production: Dvein filmes, Filmika Galaika and Bando à Parte
Feature film fiction
Director: Gabriel Azorín
Antonio wants to tell Jota that he's afraid of being alone when Jota goes to university. Aurelius doesn't know whether to desert with Pompey or go to the Dacia war front. Tonight, in the Thermal Baths, a young man from the 21st century and a Roman soldier from the 1st century will share a hot bath and the fear of losing their best friend.
MASK, BUSHES AND DEATH
Portugal | São Tomé and Príncipe
Bando à Parte
Documentary
Director: Jorge Quintela
Despite the premature death of anthropologist Paulo Valverde in 1999 at the age of 37 from malaria, his academic legacy remains an important milestone in cultural studies on São Tomé. Based on the monograph ‘Máscara, Mato e Morte em São Tomé’, published posthumously, and Valverde's personal archive, the documentary reconstructs the anthropologist's travels around the island of São Tomé, with the help of his student and close friend Luís Quitais, a poet and professor of anthropology at the University of Coimbra.
GUERRILLA ON THE ASPHALT
Portugal
Bando à Parte
Feature film fiction
Director: Edgar Pêra
GUERRILLA ON THE ASPHALT is fiction anchored in reality, a film about utopia and violence. It starts with a quiet student who gets involved in a terrorist organisation and ends up shot and lynched by the population in the aftermath of a robbery of two banks. Throughout the film we witness the sometimes cartoonish, sometimes tragic problems of these ‘guerrillas of the asphalt’ in their fight against the system: from the battles against the neo-Nazis to the violent and bloodthirsty activities of the organisation.
XICO
Portugal
Bando à Parte
Feature film fiction
Director: Latifa Said
Chico, 70, lives in the Alentejo, where he was born. One day he receives a letter discovering that he has a daughter from a relationship he had with an Angolan woman when he was a soldier in Angola during the colonial war. His daughter lives in Lisbon.
Against his older sister's wishes, Chico decides to leave everything behind and go in search of his daughter...
UNA
Portugal
Bando à Parte
Animated feature film
Directors: David Doutel and Vasco Sá
After losing her mother and being turned away from her childhood village, UNA becomes a sullen teenager, disconnected from social reality. As she tries to evade within her inner world, she discovers a clear icy landscape, inhabited by a fearless child, whom she calls NUAH. After countless adventures, UNA finds herself trapped in her fantasies and forced to undertake a painful initiatory journey that will bring her back to life and to a world in need of transformation.
YOU ABOVE ALL
Bando à Parte
Portugal USA
Feature film fiction
Directors: Luke Eberl and Edgar Morais
Alexandre, a young man from Três Povos, a village of Fundão, divides his days between the nursing home, where he works, Laura's house, where he takes care of his demential grandmother, and the local café, the only place of contact available to the village population. As his sexual frustration and loneliness intensify, Alexander begins to manipulate Laura and doubt everything he believes in.
TOUCADOR
Portugal
Bando à Parte
Fiction short film
Director: Susana Abreu
THE TOUCADOR is the name of a magazine that Garrett conceived and launched in 1822, whose aim was to educate women similar to his very young wife Luísa Midosi, in the arts of appearance, courtesy, etiquette, representation.
GHOST VOICES
Portugal / Finland / Italy / Poland
Bando à Parte
Documentary
Director: Rodrigo Areias
This project is a documentary series about the European periphery through its voices. Voices sung from ancestral traditions that perpetuate the culture of these places through oral traditions.
THE STRENGTH OF A BULL
Portugal | Mozambique
Bando à Parte
Documentary
Director: André Guiomar
New Chung is Mozambican and at the age of 4 was forced to run away from the devastating Civil War. He was left in a Shaolin temple in China where he becomes master of Kung Fu. Years later, when he returns to Mozambique, what would be just a visit has become a permanent stay. After facing the weak state of the police forces, New Chung no longer leaves his country. He decides to make his contribution and today he is the special forces trainer of Mozambique. Even so, he doesn't forget his biggest dream: to be an actor in martial arts films.