Best Portuguese history movies

Operation Autumn (2012)

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

Corte (2020)

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.

A Vida Privada de Salazar (2009)

Na fase final da vida de Salazar, o estadista recorda a sua vida, as suas opções, as decisões que tomou e as que podia ter tomado. Dar a conhecer o homem por detrás de quem governou Portugal durante 40 anos foi o grande desafio: Salazar, enquanto estadista, é conhecido do grande público. O mito do estadista estóico, convictamente religioso e assexuado tem o contraponto neste filme.

Inês de Portugal (1997)

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.

New Amsterdam (2017)

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.

Aljubarrota (2008)

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

Until Tomorrow, Comrades (2013)

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 Fuga (1978)

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.

Florbela (2012)

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.

Christopher Columbus, The Enigma (2007)

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".

Zeus (2017)

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

A Abóbada (2021)

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

Red Line (2012)

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?

Iris (2017)

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.

Viriato (2019)

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.

Who Are You? (2001)

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.

Zéfiro (1993)

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 (2023)

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?

Soares é Fixe (2024)

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.

What Shall I Do With This Sword? (1975)

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

Silvestre (1982)

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

Vilarinho das Furnas (1971)

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.

Minino macho, Minino fêmea (2006)

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.

Fordlandia Malaise (2019)

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.

Natal 71 (1999)

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.

Daughters of the Fatherland (2023)

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.

Acto dos Feitos da Guiné (1980)

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.

Guerra do Mirandum (1981)