Movies: João César Monteiro

Laura Rossellini, a widow from Rome, vacations on the Algarve coast one hot summer. One day while sunbathing, she finds a wounded man named Robert drifting in the surf on a rubber raft. She takes him home, and, after he is revived, learns his story. ...

Eloi, a paunchy middle-aged man, finds Samuel, a young sad sack, about to kill himself by plunging into the sea. Eloi takes Samuel under his wing, giving him a hot meal and bringing him to a seedy night club to introduce him to Esperança, who is said...

One of the adventures of João de Deus....

An ice-cream seller lusts after the female employees in his shop....

A bewitching combinatory adaptation of the Bluebeard tale and a 15th century Portuguese fable of a damsel who disguises herself as a knight errant....

An angry young man goes to Europe to find his father, a '60s radical turned doctor in exile....

Parallel tales of young couples desperately escaping cruel false fathers, each couple on the run across different regions of the country and during increasingly contemporary time periods....

A sentimental comedy about... toothpicks. The hero manufactures and exchanges toothpicks for countless goods because he ignores the value of money. "The Millionaire" is his nickname. He runs around the city, happy, meeting friends: Carlitos, the news...

Two of the best fishermen in the city, umrui aka Dj Mafia and dj bullins, went to the deepest waters of the ocean and fished for sounds never heard before. Converting electronic music to simple and humble Portugueseness, we talk about our great battl...

Lisbon, 1989. A middle-aged poor man, tormented by an illness, lives in a cheap room in a family boarding house, in the old section of the city's waterfront....

Film directors with hand-held cameras went to the streets of Lisbon from April 25 to May 1, 1974, registering interviews and political events of the Portuguese "Carnations Revolution", as that period would be later known....

In this highly theatrical TV production, Monteiro again draws on the world of folklore – and, more precisely, on the widespread sexual connotation of the pomegranate – to tell a tale of love, envy, treason and mistaken/double identities....

João Vuvu, lives alone in a house that requires regeneration but due to being alone he is unable to do the work. On his son's release from prison and João's ensuing deception triggers a series of somber events....

João de Deus receives a treat from a friend, unclogs his bathtub, and contemplates Lisbon from his window....

The shady side of an Italian textile trade in northern Germany is the subject of this slow-paced but atmospheric drama featuring Alberto Sordi as Totonno, a low-level, petty criminal anxious to move up a somewhat crooked ladder. Rising to the rank of...

The Mother is one of Monteiro’s first essays on the universe of Portuguese oral culture, folktales and obscure colloquialisms. The plot revolves around a traditional tale about theft, greed, an ubiquitous mother, and the links between the worlds of t...

Two actors performing in Strindberg's "Inferno" as God and Lucifer, find themselves competing in real life as well. One of them, Henrique, has spiritual obsession with John Wayne and his way of walking. He and de Dieu, his fellow actor who plays Luci...

Maria works in a German umbrella factory as the foreman of the production sector. João Lucas has given up on living a normal life and practically lives in bed, in the midst of green plants. His father expressly desired that his son film this eccentri...

Artur is in Lisbon for his holidays, wonders aimlessly, and is picked up by Rui, a young man who is into marketing and advertising. Joana is in Lisbon for holidays, but also trying to escape from a mysterious, dark passion. Artur and Joana come toget...

“I think my film represents above all the proof to those who want to understand and accept it, that poetry can’t be filmed, that it is useless to try” - João César Monteiro...