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Sandro Aguilar’s “First Person Plural,” which screens at International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Tiger Competition, has launched its trailer with Variety.

The film is produced by O Som E A Fúria, the company behind Miguel Gomes’ “Tabu” and “Arabian Nights,” Eugène Green’s “The Portuguese Nun” and Lucrecia Martel’s “Zama.”

“First Person Plural” centers on Mateus Lagoa and his wife Irene, who will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary at a luxurious resort on a tropical island, leaving their teenage son dangerously adrift. Before departure, during an unexpected night apart, vaccine side effects strike —fevers, fainting and hallucinations. A melancholic mood creeps in, fracturing their world and hinting at unforeseen dangers.

In a statement, Aguilar comments: “When Mateus and Irene wake up in their idyllic retreat and the whole landscape changes abruptly: luxury hotels, massages, cocktails, stereotypes of a reward on earth, everything takes on a ceremonial nature,...

In one of its major recent scripted pick-ups, Zdf Studios has acquired international distribution rights to “Lume,” an eco thriller set against the building crisis of endemic wildfires on the northern Portugal-Spain border which is devastating its countryside.

The production-distribution powerhouse of one of Europe’s biggest public broadcaster powerhouses, Zdf Studios is bringing “Lume” to market at this week’s Mipcom trade fair.

The Zdf pick-up is just the latest sign of interest from international companies and institutions in “Lume.” Warner Bros. Discovery’s platform Max will stream the series in Spain and Portugal, airing simulcasting with Rtp and Televisión de Galicia (Tvg), the public broadcasters of Portugal and Galicia, Spain’s North-West region.

“Lume” was also one of nine E.U. series which won co-financing this June in the second round of the Council of Europe’s pilot program for Series Co-Production Support. The grants target high-quality productions.

Portuguese-Spanish echo-drama “Lume,” an Rtp (Portugal), TV Galicia (Spain) and Max pickup, has filled out its Iberian cast.

From the western side of the peninsula, Portuguese Academy Sophia Award-winner Lúcia Moniz, Albano Jerónimo (“The Domain”) and Ricardo Pereira (“Amor Amor”) have all joined the show’s ranks.

Ricardo Pereira, Lúcia Moniz, Albano Jerónimo

The Portuguese trio will be joined by Spanish actors Cristina Castaño (“La que se avecina”) Xúlio Abonjo (“Sin Plomo”) and Alfonso Agra (“Serramoura”).

Cristina Castaño, Xúlio Abonjo, Alfonso Agra

“Lume” was inspired by the increasingly frequent wildfires that have ravaged the Spanish and Portuguese countryside in recent years. In the show, a forest fire endangers a small village on the border between Galicia and Portugal. There, Lucía starts a journalistic investigation of the case that quickly becomes personal. She quickly learns that while a fire can destroy, it can also expose hidden truths.

The show is being...

Turn of the Tide (Rabo de Peixe) is a series created by Augusto Fraga starring José Condessa, Helena Caldeira and Rodrigo Tomás.

The Turn of the Tide series draws inspiration from cinema, particularly from Guy Ritchie‘s work. The series begins with a nod to Trainspotting and takes the audience on a delightful journey through a charming landscape and a humorous story.

However, this is just the start. Turn of the Tide’s unique style, which is more relaxed than that of Ritchie or Sky Rojo, allows it to take advantage of its story and characters in a coastal setting. The series includes gangsters and marginalized characters, but it is also full of humanity and hope. If you’re looking for an entertaining weekend, consider giving this series a chance as it is definitely worth it.

About the series

Turn of the Tide is a unique series that stands out...

Imagine a world where you could not only find your perfect match, but you'd also be scientifically and genetically proven to fall in love with them (and vice versa), simply by sending off a DNA sample. Well, that's exactly the world that Netflix's new show The One is set in, and it's not all it's cracked up to be. The show follows the story of Rebecca (played by Hannah Ware), the CEO of a company called MatchDNA that helps people find their perfect match. The success of the company hinges entirely on one single DNA database that Rebecca and her business partner have access to, and the show goes on to explore the effects of "the match" on different relationships.

While it sounds like a good idea at first, and in principle suggests that everyone eventually ends up with their one perfect match, in reality, what it means is...

The opening of “The Domain” is a classic mid-length widescreen shot of a solitary tree silhouetted against the sky. The camera slowly pans left to reveal a second tree, with a man hanging from a branch. This too feels fairly familiar, if disturbing, and one watches imagining that director Tiago Guedes is using such archetypal images to then play with the form, or do something unusual with the subsequent nearly three-hour running time. Instead, his sprawling family epic spanning from 1946 to 1991 largely shifts from the derivative to the banal. Designed like a meaty novel in which Portugal’s political fortunes impact a privileged family of landowners,

Guedes (“Noise”) points to Westerns and some melodramas like Vincente Minnelli’s “Home From the Hill” as major influences, which demonstrably act as templates with added political overtones. Certainly the way the tug-of-war between dictatorship, revolution and capitalism batters the independent-minded Fernandes family does...

Chicago – In many ways, 2011 was the year of startlingly successful throwbacks. Who could’ve guessed that Woody Allen, Tom Cruise and The Muppets would revive their crowd-pleasing appeal? How many moviegoing soothsayers predicted that Michel Hazanavicius’ melodrama, “The Artist,” would become an Oscar front-runner that proves the silent art form is far from dead?

And who could’ve possibly dreamed that veteran Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz would end his extraordinary 48-year-long career with a staggering epic that revitalized the storytelling techniques of a nineteenth century Portuguese novelist? “Mysteries of Lisbon” is a direct rebuke to the conventional narratives that follow uncluttered three-act structures. At four-and-a-half hours, this film preserves the scope and density of its source material, while utilizing modern technology to make every frame thrillingly cinematic.

Blu-ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

Author Camilo Castelo Branco’s illegitimate birth and upbringing as an orphan are clearly reflected in the young character placed at the center of his 1852 novel.

It may be more than four hours long, but Raúl Ruiz's final film is an entrancingly strange, beautifully eccentric fable set in 19th-century Portugal

This is the last completed work from the remarkable and prolific Chilean film-maker Raúl Ruiz, who died in August this year at the age of 70. Originally intended as a TV mini-series, it has now been boldly put together as a dream-epic feature in two parts, lasting four-and-a-half hours. Mysteries of Lisbon is intensely and captivatingly strange, a sinuous melodrama about secrecy, destiny and memory in which everyone involved appears to be in a state of hypnosis and on the edge of departing for some Magrittean alternative universe. "Mysteries" is exactly right.

Ruiz's screenwriter Carlos Saboga has adapted an 1854 novel, Mistérios de Lisboa, by the Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco, set around the turn of the 19th century. Branco's story is an involved tale of coincidences,...