Movies: João César Monteiro

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...

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. ...

After receiving a visit from a messenger of God, João de Deus wins his buddy's girlfriend through a roll of the dice....

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....

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....

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

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....

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

Monteiro moved far away from the visual opulence defined by his earlier films with his inspired adaptation of radical Swiss writer Robert Walser’s anti-fairy tale. Carefully restricting the image track, Monteiro maintains an almost totally black scre...

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...

The tribulations of two friends who, in despair, start begging from door-to-door, and are given a bundle including, literally, a pair of deadman's shoes...

A story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives....

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....

Fernanda, António and Quim are travelling by train to a provincial Portuguese industrial city. Fernanda, a teacher, agrees to replace a pregnant colleague. António is returning to the home he was forced to flee long ago, accused of setting fire to th...

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...

“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...

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...

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

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

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...