On July 6th, 1808, the "Bom Sucesso" caique and 18 fishermen left Olhão, in Portugal, towards Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), taking with them the good news that Portugal was finally free of Napoleon's enemy troops.
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.
On a day like any other, a woman leaves work and heads to a party in the outskirts of Lisbon. On her way there she sees a man ready to jump off a bridge. She stops the car and approaches the man, trying to save him.
Teresa finds out in Africa that her husband, Xavier, was lost in child prostitution. She flees to South Africa where she meets the maid's daughter, prostituted. It ends up getting the Mozambican police to save her and testify against the network of child prostitution. She becomes a star. The rescued girl has the media attention and also becomes a star.
Lázaro Lafourcade, an old capitalist, is found dead in his mansion after a dinner with his peculiar family. An inspector is called in to investigate the crime and find the culprit, delving into the glamorous and sordid underworld of the Lafourcades, kicking off a good old-fashioned crime story where everyone is a suspect. A whodunnit that takes us back to the 1950s and results in an "eat the rich" narrative, while the investigation takes place at the Lafourcades' home.
The family of Ana Luisa meets at home to celebrate her father's birthday. As the guests sit around the table they will share memories of the past, in which all have a common denominator: the late Josefa, Ana Luisa's mother. Hearing the stories, Ana Luisa realizes the impact that his late mother had on their life choices and imagines what would have happened if she had followed other paths, taken other options and said what was unsaid. At the same time, an event of unknown origin causes a change in space and time, enabling people all over the world the access to parallel universes. Ana Luisa will thus have the opportunity to change the past...
When a group of friends fail to lower the ladder of their boat, they find themselves stranded in the surrounding waters and struggle to survive.
The story of Jacinta, one of the three children involved in the Marian apparition reported in 1917 at Cova da Iria, in Fátima, Portugal.
Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. In her youth she marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, her father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. As time goes by she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a new lover.
An ice-cream seller lusts after the female employees in his shop.
A courtroom. A divorce. A drama told in flashback. In a courtroom story, the viewer will witness the divorce of Clemente and Emília, in which the division of property and custody of a child are discussed. But something strange slowly begins to emerge in the testimonies: from the clash between the two versions of the same couple's experience, the truth will come to light.
The hypochondriac Sebastião and his not so normal family must save the country from the prime minister's plan of selling the country to China, Germany, France and Angola, and show that Portugal is not for sale.
At the end of the seventeenth century, in Naples, still dominated by the Spaniards, a young pupil, Balthasar,is castrated to preserve the purity and beauty of his voice. The Duchess dies and her son, the Duke of Arcos, takes charge of the inheritance, which includes Balthasar. With the entrance of Maria Loffredo, former lover of the Duke, a triangle is established that unchains tragic consequences to the allegedly callous life of Balthasar.
A romance comedy about a nonconformist couple of young parents who, looking for a solution to their fragile financial situation, is involved in an innocent and crazy scheme.
Lúcia is an independent woman who lives alone in Lisbon. Her father commits suicide leaving her a message on phone recorder, revealing a letter he wrote. However Lúcia can't find it in her father's house. On that visit she ends up meeting with her mother, a known political activist with whom she has a distant and tense relationship. In hope of finding the letter, Lúcia leaves to the farm where she grew up, on an isolated location. There she reencounters Álvaro, an old childhood companion, who shares a little life time he has left between roses and the piano, and the guardian angel that follows and protects her through nocturnal wanderings.
Young Jesus is taken on a vacation by his parents (Rita Blanco, Adriano Luz) to a deserted beach resort. They accidentally fall into overnight wealth after Jesus digs in the sand, uncovering a large drug stash. Others characters intersecting here include an alcoholic actress, a philandering banker, a general trafficking in arms, priests who close their church and head north as hitchhikers, politicians who watch an all-girl production of Julius Caesar, and beggars who recite a children's story in a huge heap of trash.
After the passing of one of his friends, João remember's the summer he had with his friends when he was 12 years old.
Júlia is a 16 year old teenager. A sudden emergency hospital commitment helps her realize, although reluctent, that she suffers from a serious desease: nervous anorexy. Her recovery is slow, but she can count on the support from both her friend, parents and the psychologist.
Vera, a single mother with two small children, is forced to have two jobs to survive after her children's father has disappeared. She works as a cashier at a supermarket by day and at night works in a strip club, trying not only to raise her children but also to pay off the debts that her ex-partner left her. Harassed in both jobs, one day she reacts violently when a nightclub client is more daring, being sentenced in court to perform community service in a nursing home, where her irreverence and youth will clash with the authoritarianism and inhumanity of the director. For the elderly who live in the nursing home, Vera is a breath of fresh air that little by little will change their lives, becoming the true home fairy…
Fiction is never very far from reality. A young man, of Portuguese heritage, decides to do a PhD based on the documentary The Good People of Portugal, a work from 1980, also directed by Rui Simões. This opens the door to a parallel between the reality of the film we see and that of PREC, the moment of the studied documentary and the contemporary world, with the young Michel in between.