Best Portuguese drama movies

Film biography dwelling on the hectic artistic life of António Variações, a famous Portuguese pop rock singer from the 80s, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1984.

In the course of one afternoon, Raphael's paradise turns into a spiral of guilt and paranoia.

Liam Liu unwittingly gets involved with a high school girl. He suddenly has to go to China after learning from his father that he has inherited his grandmother's home in Shanghai. He's not very appreciative of his Chinese roots, and at first, only wants to sell the house and get back to the U.S. as fast as possible. He gets a taste of the Chinese culture and ends up having some big decisions to make.

When a group of friends fail to lower the ladder of their boat, they find themselves stranded in the surrounding waters and struggle to survive.

Jô is kicked out of home by his father on his birthday. Having no place to go, he takes refuge in the terrace of Rose, who just lost her husband.

Story of the 1974 coup that overthrew the right-wing Portuguese dictatorship--which continued the fascist policies of long-time dictator Antonio Salazar--and of two young army captains who were involved in it.

Filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos sifts through the memories of her ancestors. Her naval officer grandfather, Henrique, who married her grandmother, Beatriz, on her 21st birthday, spent extended periods at sea, leaving her with six children. This is the beginning of a generational saga.

The chronicle of a Portuguese family that owns one of the largest estates in Europe, on the south bank of the River Tagus. The Domain delves deeply into the secrets of their homestead, portraying the historical, political, economic and social life of Portugal, since the 1940's to these days.

A young priest commits a crime when he falls in love with a beautiful and troubled woman. Based on O Crime do Padre Amaro ("The Crime of Father Amaro"), a novel by the 19th-century Portuguese writer José Maria de Eça de Queiroz. It was first published in 1875 to great controversy.

Inês is a teenager from a wealthy family. However, after classes, he participates in risky sexual games, compulsively uses the internet and attends the nightlife of Lisbon, entering a spiral of total destruction.

In the wake of his daughter's disappearance, a father wallowing in grief feeds his desire to find her with unusual methods.

Romeu, a corrupt cop, hires the services of Cid and Alex, to catch a notorious criminal, who left Mexico and is on his way to Galicia, Spain to find the killer of his brother, also trying to catch the same criminal is an FBI agent.

While the young captains lead the revolution in the streets, the people of Fontainhas search for Ventura, lost in the woods.

Two schoolboys, Carlitos and Eduardo, fight for the affection of a girl, Teresinha.

A regular family living in the outskirts of Lisbon sees the serenity of their lives shaken beyond any remedy within a week.

A photographer, Isaac is asked by hotel owners to take portraits of their recently deceased daughter Angélica. When he looks at her through the lens of his camera, she appears to come back to life just for him. He instantly falls in love with her. From that moment, he will be haunted by Angélica day and night.

In 1917 Burma (now Myanmar), a British diplomat is set to marry his fiancée, but after a sudden panic, escapes to Singapore, sending her on what evolves into a chase across Asia.

Xavier, a village boy, falls for Laura, neighbor's granddaughter who visits her grandfather annually. Despite flirting at summer dances, Xavier believes he has no chance with her.

An unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but taking as main focus the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte.

It is 1979. Four young ladies are hired to form a girl band. They can sing, they shine with their dancing, and they shock the country. They become a big hit. They are DOCE.

A lorry, a road and an unpredictable destiny, all intersecting in a human trafficking network. Caught up in this web, Viktoriya has only one chance: fight to survive.

Passionate romance, brutal treachery, and selfless nobility are set against the background of Napoleon’s 1810 invasion of Portugal.

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.

The tragedy and comedy in Carlos' life begins, grows and ends like the tragedy and comedy of Portugal. In the company of his close friend, João da Ega, allegedly a brilliant writer, Carlos, with his idle existence as an aristocratic doctor, spends his time to enjoying friends and lovers. Until he falls in love. She is a new character in this revolutionary novel. It's a vertiginous passion that goes beyond that past gloominess to reach a new and darker abyss, incest.

A woman takes her young son, leaves her husband and moves in with her lover. The boy, desperate to get his parents back together, becomes convinced that if only he can get his father's stolen motorcycle back everything will be fine again, so he sets out to get enough money to buy his father a new one.

A director struggles with a difficult sex scene between a young actor and actress who can't stand one another. Aided by her loyal assistant, she is hell-bent on getting the scene right without compromise.

A Portuguese soldier, who got stranded from his team during the La Lys battle, struggles by himself through dozens of German offensives so he can guarantee the safety of his companions.

After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.

Nino, tough but sickly, and his older brother Vicente live in the country with their father. After their father disappears ― we’re never sure why ― murder is suggested. Vicente brings his girlfriend to the house, and a different kind of family is established as the three youngsters grow fiercely protective of each other. But their uncle grows suspicious about the fate of the missing father and forcibly kidnaps Nino, taking him away to the city and leaving Vicente to locate him there.

Every year, four ex-soldiers who call themselves "Os Imortais" ("The Immortals"), get together with four women to celebrate their war deeds and remember the old days, back in the war. On the summer of 1985, tired of their monotonous lives, they decide to rob a bank. Joaquim Malarranha, a chief inspector from the local police force who is about to retire, crosses their path and chooses to spend his last days of duty trying to solve the robbery. But as he carries on with his investigation, he discovers more than he could have ever imagined...

The story about the romance of Snu Abecassis and the former Portuguese prime minister Sá Carneiro.

After breaking up with her boyfriend, a woman named Odete descends into madness and claims to be pregnant with the child of her neighbour Pedro, who died in a car crash and is mourned by his boyfriend Rui.

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 with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.

Rui is in the process of separation from Silvia, his wife and John, his son, realizing that his father can not get out of this situation and that he will never be happy, decides to ask for help from the mythical Bolivian hero "El Justiciero".

Sergio is a brooding, alienated man who works as a trash collector in Lisbon by day and roams the city streets by night seeking rough, anonymous sex with men. One night he meets a man who seems to be the embodiment of his tormented fantasies, and he becomes obsessed with the stranger until loneliness and unfulfilled desire propel him finally into a dark and dangerous animalistic state.

In 1971, António Lobo Antunes' life is brutally interrupted when he is drafted into the Portuguese Army to serve as a doctor in one of the worst zones of the Colonial War – the East of Angola. Away from everything dear he writes letters to his wife while he is immersed in an increasingly violent setting. While he moves between several military posts he falls in love for Africa and matures politically. At his side, an entire generation struggles and despairs for the return home. In the uncertainty of war events, only the letters can make him survive.

Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, his working-class values collide with the bourgeois trappings of modern life.

Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. In her youth she marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, her father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. As time goes by she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a new lover.

The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.

Fed up with the sea, Paul, a Swiss mechanic working in the noisy bowels of a merchant ship, lands in Lisbon.

On a train to Algarve, a young man recounts to a fellow passenger his past relationship with an eccentric young woman.

Parque Mayer was the park off all the emotions and amusements in the 1930' s. Under the dictatorship of Oliveira Salazar and his police, many people came to have fun in its theaters attending the portuguese kind of play called 'revista'. A writer called Mario Pintor (paintor) is writing a play in which a new actress (Deolinda) will star as the main role, while an already famous actor named Eduardo tries to seduce this recent arrival.

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. As they talk, their mutual attraction grows, until a group of armed men suddenly arrive looking for Robert.

A transgender woman attempts to rehabilitate her younger, drug-addicted boyfriend while also dealing with her ne’er-do-well son, a solider who’s gone AWOL.

The Forest of the Lost Souls is a dense and remote forest, Portugal's most popular place for suicide. In a summer morning, two strangers meet within the woods.

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.

Episodes from throughout the entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a conscripted student of history recounts them to his fellow soldiers while they march through an African colony in revolt during 1973.

Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.

Tó, a black boy from Zona J, a tough neighborhood in Lisbon, falls in love with a white girl, Carla. Tó dreams of living in Angola and taking Carla with him. However, the reality the two teens are in complicates their plans...

Outside, the first sun rays break the dawn. Sixteen years old Catarina can't fall asleep. Inconsequently, in the big city adults are moved by desire... Catarina found she is HIV positive. She wants to drag everyone else along.

In 1974, a group of men lost their lives in what is still called today the Bloodless Revolution of Portugal.

A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.

A filmmaker returns to Macao, China, to help a friend who is in trouble.

The Inquisition continues the persecution of Portuguese Jews, sending Visitador Sebastião Noronha to the city of Oporto. With his family and community in danger, António Álvares, decides to outline an escape plan.

A young French actress in Lisbon to shoot a movie is intrigued by a nun she sees kneeling in the chapel where she is filming.

A young man under house arrest spends his time in the best way he can by making some tattoos. His relative peace is strangely disturbed when he's attacked and robbed by three kids from the neighborhood. From then on, he'll try to find the kids who took his money and maybe give them a lesson. But with those actions, comes the reflection of how things were and are in this place filled with violence and hostility. Is change possible?

Manoel de Oliveira's autobiographical documentary about returning to his hometown.

This is the story of a young Mozambican footballer called Eusébio, a gifted athlete destined to great achievements, coveted by rival clubs, Sporting and Benfica, which ends up hiring him. Blackmail, kidnapping attempts, ministers involved, press hysteria and huge money offers make the story of this football transfer into a saga evolving between the two continents. It ends up when the legend begins: with Eusébio’s first match at the Benfica Stadium.

A woman recovering from a personal tragedy imprisons a man she met at a party, shutting him in a room of a building demolition.

A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.

A girl whose heart beats faster than normal and so loudly that it bothers the neighbors seeks both acceptance and escape.

Mário, eight years old, a kid who begs in the tourist paradise of Madeira island. One day in his life, from morning to evening.

An inactive swim coach follows an enigmatic blind man who will help her overcome a past that haunts her and prevents her from practicing her profession.

For a 13-year-old boy like Filipe, the prospect of a summer vacation in the Azores with his father is like a dream come true. But dreams are sometimes just a way to avoid facing reality.

Rita is fifteen and spends the summer between warm afternoons of teenage love and party nights with her friend Sara. From Portugal to the South Pacific, the pleasures of this routine will take a turn when the young girl visits the art show of a new neighbor in the local community.

Guilherme and Sofia, brother and sister, grow up sharing experiences and slowly discovering their sexuality. The thing that Sofia doesn't know is how far Guilherme will go to keep her inside his own perverse, dark and perfect circle.