Best Portuguese history 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

Joaquim Pinto has been living with HIV and VHC for almost twenty years. “What now? Remind Me” is the notebook of a year of clinical studies with toxic, mind altering drugs as yet unapproved. An open and eclectic reflection on time and memory, on epidemics and globalization, on survival beyond all expectations, on dissent and absolute love. In a to-and-fro between present and past memories, the film is also a tribute to friends departed and those who remain.

North of Italy, the von Kettens dispute the forces of the Episcopate of Trent. Herr Ketten seeks marriage in a distant country, Portugal. After their honeymoon journey back home, Ketten leaves again for the war. Eleven years elapsed… Rumours are running about the presence of that 'foreigner' in the castle. Some say she's a heretic. Until one day, the Bishop of Trento ends up dying and, with the signature of peace, falls the background of von Ketten's life. Will the Portuguese win, where death seems to be moving in?

Spain, 1519. Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese navigator in the service of King Charles I, undertakes, at the command of five ships, a commercial expedition to the Moluccas. The story of the first circumnavigation of the world, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1522.

A história é baseada em fatos reais e inspirada no livro “Matar ou Morrer“, do ex-oficial Conte Lopes. Apesar de ser uma produção independente o filme pretende criar polêmica e já é sucesso nos camelôs como o primo rico “Tropa de Elite”.

On January 21, 1975, in a village in the north of Portugal, a child writes to his parents who are in Angola to tell them how sad Portugal is. On July 13, 2011, in Milan, an old man remembers his first love. On May 6, 2012, in Paris, a man tells his baby daughter that he will never be a real father. During a wedding ceremony on September 3, 1977 in Leipzig, the bride battles against a Wagner opera that she can’t get out of her head. But where and when have these four poor devils begun searching for redemption?

Manoel de Oliveira directs José Régio's historical epic of religious and political power struggles. King Sebastião plans to make Portugal the world's Fifth Empire.

One hundred years after Portugal joining World War One, the narrator starts a quest to know more about his great-grandfather Francisco Nobre, who fought in the trenches in France. A group photography, where no one seems able to identify his great-grandfather, serves as a starting point to find out who was this man no one seems to remember.

Images and sounds expose the duality of Portugal during the days of WW2: a peaceful, god-loving, rural country, providing an escape route for over one hundred thousand European refugees to the Americas; and a political and cultural elite that disguised their Nazi inclinations just enough to play its neutral role in international politics.

A commission from CIBA - Battle of Aljubarrota Interpretation Center, from the Batalha de Aljubarrota Foundation.

The tragic story of the many lives of Father Dinis, his dark origins and his pious works, and the different fates of all those who, trapped in a sinister web of love, hate and crime, cross paths with him through years of adventure.

Seville, 1968. Honorio, Rafa, and Vicente are about to turn 20 and dream of escaping their routine. After watching a NO-DO newsreel about the tourism boom on the Costa del Sol and its air of freedom, they decide to travel to Torremolinos to change their lives and, above all, lose their virginity with Swedish women. Armed with the necessary excuses and a loaded Seat 600, they embark on a journey that will challenge everything they thought they knew until then.

Portugal, 1944. In a country oppressed by a brutal dictatorship, there are those who resist and mobilize the people to fight for bread and freedom, even if it cost them prison, torture or their lives.

A film about General Humberto Delgado's brutal assassination by the Portuguese fascist police in 1965.

Shaken by a divorce in the 1920s, Portuguese poetess Florbela Espanca uses her writing to deal with her tumultuous relationship with men, eroticism and love.

A national coach working in Lisbon during World War II also acted as a spy for the Allies, leading a risky double life

At the core of a royal court unbalanced by the long absence of its King, where women seem to have disappeared along with reason, the Crown Prince is murdered. Wrapped in the plot of the promoters of a decaying libertine spirit, the heir’s brothers, a pair of twins united by the music they play together and their Valet, witness a hunt for the prepetator launched by the palace doctor's deduction. In the background of all the chatter rises the individual desire of the twins for the dynasty.

In the final phase of Salazar's life, the statesman recalls his life, his choices, the decisions he made, and those he could have made. Revealing the man behind the figure who ruled Portugal for 40 years was the great challenge: Salazar, as a statesman, is known to the general public. The myth of the stoic, staunchly religious, and asexual statesman is counterbalanced in this film.

In the 1950s, a handful of prisoners attempt a daring escape from Peniche, a castle on the north coast of Portugal for the political dissidents of the regime.

Adventurer, pilgrim, penitent but above all outstanding writer, Fernão Mendes Pinto left us an unparalleled romance, the living and human palpitation of one of the greatest historical adventures of man.

A retrospective analysis of the causes and consequences of the catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine on April 26, 1986.

A true story of a doctor and his wife who went on a journey in order to prove that discoverer Christopher Columbus was in fact Portuguese. Inspired by the book "Cristóvão Colon Era Português".

In 1975, Thomas Harlan's crew filmed Torre Bela's homestead occupation, in the center of Portugal. Three decades later, RED LINE revisits this emblematic film of the Portuguese revolutionary period: in which way did Harlan interfered in the events that seems to naturally develop in front of the camera? What was the impact of the film on the lives of the occupants and the memory of that period?

Manuel Teixeira Gomes the Portuguese President who left everything behind with only one premise: become who he really wanted to be

An adaptation of the story with the same name by Portuguese writer Alexandre Herculano.

Caleidoscope of documentary-like scenes and re-enacted episodes of a day in the life of a large port town – Lisbon, from the old district around Saint George's Castle down to the docks and the 'Sagres' on the Tagus river, to the new commercial districts.

Thousands of years ago there was a warrior who fought and gave his life for a territory that later became Lusitania. Against the advancements of the Roman Empire, which possessed an immense armada, it chose to dedicate its life to the protection of its people and their lands. His name was ... Viriato.

During the war of the Portuguese overseas colonies, Íris Maria, an 18-year-old Portuguese girl born on a small island in Mozambique won the titles of Miss Mozambique and Miss Portugal 1972. This is her story.

A historical classic drama in three acts, retold after an original prologue about dreams and nightmares of the thirteen-year-old noble heroine, Maria de Noronha.

Zephyrus is a film-voyage, a fresco about Southern Portugal. A movie dealing metaphorically with the South of Portugal, singling it out as a place where various cultures came together and mix, giving birth to a singular identity, as unique as this movie itself, a mixture of fiction and documentary

Amadeo: a mysteriously restless and indefatigable man as if always sensing brevity of the time he had left. An artist out of definition, whose painting questions the painting itself, indomitable, scandalous and misunderstood. For being «Infinitely» according Almada, is someone who never had the time within him. How many lives are there in Amadeo de Souza Cardoso’s brief life?

Natal 71 is the name of a record given to the soldiers of the portuguese colonies overseas for Christmas 1971. Niassa's Songbook is the title of an audiotape illegally recorded by soldiers during the war years, in Mozambique. They are memories from a country which was shut from the rest of the world, poor and ignorant, laid to sleep by a stale and primitive propaganda which tried to hide all the conflicts from us and kept us from thinking and recognising the repressive nature of the regime we lived in.

1986, just 12 years after the Carnation Revolution. The Left Wing is divided, while the Right seems on track for an easy win, which will give them both a President and a Government. The only one capable of stopping this victory is a man who fought his whole life against Estado Novo. Arrested dozens of time, deported and exiled, he was one of the first to arrive in Lisbon after April 25st. That man is Mário Soares.

By cross-editing footage of Portuguese workers protesting against NATO forces and various movies, Monteiro shows how one 'sword' can confront the army.

Man and boy play a futile game of chess in the middle of nowhere. An internal struggle between what is and what can no longer be.

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

During the century of the Spanish Gold, Doña Prouhèze, wife of a nobleman, deeply loves Don Rodrigo, who is forced to leave Spain and go to America. Meanwhile Prouhèze is sent to Africa to rule the city of Mogador. Ten years later Rodrigo leaves America and travels to Africa in search of Prouhèze to find out that she died and eventually meeting her daughter.

Situated at the foot of Yellow Mountain, which protected it from the cold offshore winds of winter, and between the rivers Man and Eido, which irrigated the fields around it, the village of Vilarinho das Furnas was destroyed in 1969. This documentary provides a tribute to the people of the town during the last 12 months of its existence, before being erased by the cold and clear waters that gave it life for so long.

Fordlandia Malaise is a film about the memory and the present of Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rain forest in 1928. His aim was to break the British rubber monopoly and produce this material in Brazil for his car production in the United States. Today, the remains of construction testify to the scale of the failure of this neocolonialist endeavor that lasted less than a decade. Nowadays, Fordlandia is a space suspended between times, between the 20th and 21st centuries, between utopia and dystopia, between visibility and invisibility: architectural buildings of steel, glass, and masonry still remain in use while traces of indigenous life left no marks on the ground.

Pedro Costa's 2006 installation Little Boy Male, Little Girl Female is made up of additional footage from In Vanda's Room and Colossal Youth. Interior and exterior spaces in Fountainhas are set side by side. Editing the images is left up to the viewer.

The tragedy of a woman who - after seven years of vain searches - gave up hope of finding her husband, a knight lost in battle in Marroc with Sebastião, king of Portugal. She marries, has a daughter by her second husband, and endures the silent reproach of an aid, Telmo Pais, the only who kept his hope that his master shall return, as well as the king... One day, a mysterious pilgrim arrives at the mansion.

Romantic story set in Macau during the 1930s. Rich, Portuguese man falls in love with poor, Chinese girl. Both families disown them and they begin a life together. Rich man now has to work for a living and eats Chinese food exclusively and the relationship gets stale.

The consuming passion between Pedro I of Portugal and Ines de Castro is brutally interrupted when Ines is executed, as a consequence of political intrigue and in the name of the kingdom's interests. Pedro, cruelly hurt, pursues the single-minded purpose of avenging his lost love. He captures and kills the executioners, and compels the nobility to acknowledge Ines as his lawful wife and Queen of Portugal.

During the student crisis of 1968, Ines, an 18-year-old homosexual, is prevented from attending law school by her family, who believe that this is not the right course for a woman. This awakens in Inês a feeling of injustice, which leads her to accept Julio's invitation to join the high school students' association. The next day, we find out that the student association has been closed since they found a copy of the clandestine newspaper "Avante!" on the premises. The rectory then decides to expel suspicious students, starting a revolt in the high school and an ideological confrontation between the couple of Inês and Adelaide.

The story of a town—Miranda do Douro—and its inhabitants, victims of a catastrophe on May 8, 1762. Around 350 to 400 people died, houses were destroyed, and many were injured. The war, which was external to those people, victimized them in the worst way, through the unexpected - the accident. The city was an important military target, and its destruction was caused by an explosion in its stronghold...

Portugal feels himself a little country in the tail of Europe. Has a wandering heart, an adventurous spirit, an embittered soul and an obedient body.

A dialogue between History and a Guerrilla Movement, interlaced with live footage taken in Portugal and Guinea-Bissau, when this country was the colony of the first.

Brazil, 18th century. The colony of Portugal endures a decline in gold production. A Portuguese minority rules over a corrupt and autocratic society. Joaquim is an efficient soldier, famous for capturing gold smugglers. While waiting for his promotion to Lieutenant, he leaves for a risky mission in search of new gold mines - the only way to buy the freedom of Blackie, a slave he is in love with. Inspired by the true story of Tiradentes, the first leader of the Brazilian revolutionary movement.

The arrival of the West Indian Companies to Natal in the XVII century is just the beginning of this violent story that pushes Bernarda and her family to run away from the city and from the invasion. In the Potengi Mill she meets the foreman's son Rafael and they immediately discover a passionate love. It will give them the force to try to survive during those violent years triggered by Jacob Rabbí, a German assigned by Prince John Maurice of Nassau to command the conquest.