Best Portuguese war movies

Madrid, Spain, 1936. The young Miguel Gila lives happily with his grandparents in a humble attic; but the outbreak of the Civil War forces him to go to fight.

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

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.

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.

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.

This is a film about how war settles in the bodies of the people who are forced to experience it directly. And then, thousands of miles away and dozens of years ahead, how, like a virus, it can still infect other human beings.

In a losing war for a nameless cause a soldier is sent to the combat zone to deliver a message from high above to the officer in charge. His mission proves to be harder than anticipated since the havoc has apparently dissolved any vestige of order or structure and every man seems to be fighting for himself. The soldier remains unyielding in his quest however; confident in the importance and relevance of the message he carries, hoping that it will contain vital information that will save his life and his comrades. But he might be in for a big disappointment...

On April 25, 1974, a man walked alone in Largo do Carmo. He knocked on the GNR military barracks door and entered, unarmed and without any escorts. Inside, the Government’s chief, Marcelo Caetano, waited, surrounded by the military and the people. The man who stared at him that afternoon and demanded surrender, guaranteeing his safety, had just led Santarém’s Artillery 1 regiment in taking the capital. Without firing a single shot, he managed to overthrow a regime that was over 48 years old. That was the last step to take and he took it, without hesitation, becoming the unavoidable figure of the day that marked the beginning of democracy in Portugal

Mozambique, 1969. What was meant to be a peaceful Christmas Eve ends up badly as a group of soldiers brings home a prisoner that will be murdered. Simultaneously, the Capitan's wife arrives in surprise, bringing along a Priest, who is supposed to celebrate the mass.

A documentary reflecting on the memories and facts of the war of liberation in Angola.

War movie made by one adult and two children with the help of a BB Gun.

A German spy in Cairo must report back to Rommel with information on British positions.

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.

The colonial war. Remembering the past, filming the present, thinking about the future. Collection of testimonies of ex-combatants still alive and archival footage.