Isabel Ruth

Romagem (2024)

Life Railways: Restless Wind (2023)

The young German journalist Samuel comes to meet Alma Bentes, a renowned Portuguese writer. Over small trips, Samuel records, trilling, fragments immortalised in the tiles of the railway stations. The train stops at life stations, and the restless wind car ...

Primeira Obra (2023)

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 ...

Where Is This Street? or With No Before or After (2022)

From our window one can see a set of the film The Green Years, directed by Paulo Rocha in 1963. This was our starting point: guided by Rocha's gaze, we look back at the places of that film. The successive geological, urbanistic and social strata of Lisbon, ...

Love Lights (2022)

The evocation of light in the cinema leads the Character of the Man of Light to ponder over it, over its essence and its multiple manifestations in a revisitation of geographical places and memories. ...

Around Rocha’s Table (2021)

'A Távola de Rocha' enables us to enter Paulo Rocha's universe, to gather memories and find, within his personal and professional relationships, a key to decipher some of the unknown symbols and allusions contained in his films. ...

Moral Order (2020)

In 1918, Maria Adelaide Coelho da Cunha, heiress and owner of the Diário de Notícias, leaves the social, cultural and family luxury in which she lives to escape with a petty chauffeur, 26 years younger. ...

Fatima (2020)

In 1917, outside the parish of Fátima, Portugal, a 10-year-old girl and her two younger cousins witness multiple visitations of the Virgin Mary, who tells them that only prayer and suffering will bring an end to World War I. As secularist government offi ...

Portugal Não Está à Venda (2019)

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. ...

Rage (2018)

Alentejo, Portugal, 1950. In a desolate region, where the wind seems to speak, where misery and hunger reign over poorest, a desperate man takes his revenge on those who caused his ruin during the darkest night, unable to get honestly the bread needed to f ...

The Frog and the Girl (2018)

Adaptation by the director Inês Oliveira from the traditional Portuguese tale «O Sapo e a Rapariga». The laundry room is closed and a young woman (Rita Cabaço) has to learn how to wash clothes by hand with the wise Deolinda (Isabel Ruth), who tells her ...

Treblinka (2016)

Present, past and future merge in the wagons of a train that crosses Eastern Europe in the XXI century: Poland, Russia, Ukraine. The slogan of the post-war "Never Again" sounds now like a fairy tale. Everything is happening again. Everywhere. ...

Weil ich dich liebe (2016)

Felicitas Woll lives through the ups and downs of a relationship: Eva and Luis exchanged only a fleeting glance in hot summer Lisbon and knew - this is the real love! They threw themselves headlong into a passionate liaison, got married and had their first ...

Ashes and Embers (2015)

Certainly an outstanding case of beauty and mystery, this short film by Mozos creates a strange alloy of literature and cinema, and not in the way one discipline is a vampire for the other, but rather as if they were the different faces of the same coin, d ...

If I Were a Thief... I'd Steal (2013)

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father's place in the house. But the village is too small for ...

Versailles (2013)

An elderly woman and a hormone-charged teenager arrive to a beach hut where, during her brief moments of clarity, she will persuade him to kill her. ...

A Woman's Revenge (2012)

Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of lif ...

Journey to Portugal (2011)

Maria, a Ukrainian doctor, comes to Portugal to spend a year with Greco, her husband who is also a doctor. Upon arrival at Faro airport she is the only person from Kiev approached by agents of Immigration and Customs that lead her to a room of interrogatio ...

Medea Miracle (2011)

Irene moves to Paris to begin a new life with her husband Jason and their two daughters, but an act of betrayal and her desire for revenge soon sends her to the brink of madness. ...

E o Tempo Passa (2011)

Teresa is a soap-opera actress. Meeting again an old passion brings her back apparently lost memories, leading her to question not only her love life but also her career options. In the studio, the daily work is spiced by the frenzy group of younger actors ...

The Strange Case of Angelica (2010)

A photographer, Isaac is asked by hotel owners to take portraits of their recently deceased daughter Angélica. When he looks at her through the lens of his camera, she appears to come back to life just for him. He instantly falls in love with her. From th ...

Amor Cego (2010)

Cold Day (2009)

A portrait of a first relationship, previous to the external world, the one of the family. In a winter in Lisbon, father, mother, son and daughter trace the path of a day by themselves. A film that develops through characters who have for their antagonist ...

From Now On (2008)

Dora divides her time between her work as a beautician, her policeman husband António, and her involvement in left-wing politics. A tale of love and how we must learn to cherish it against all odds in the pursuit of happiness. ...

Nadine (2007)

A career woman's finds her biological clock ticking heavily, making her jump to impulsive and extreme actions. ...

Magic Mirror (2006)

Luciano, fresh out of jail, was taken by his brother, Flórido, to serve in the home of wealthy Alfreda. He was surprised when she told him that her greatest desire was to see the Virgin Mary. Now comes this rich land owner with her sublime pretensions. Is ...

Adriana (2005)

In a remote island where mourning was settled, a man decreed that there will never be sex or children anymore... The island gets desolate and he decided to send his daughter, Adriana, to the mainland to form a family by natural methods. ...

The Pedal Push Car (2004)

During Holy Week of 59 in the tragicomic social landscape of Franco's Spain, takes place the sentimental chronicle of a nine years old boy: Pablito. Pablito wants the pedal car he sees in a shop near his home. His family -middle class with bad luck - silen ...

Vanity (2004)

Vanitas is the new feature film by veteran Portuguese director Paulo Rocha. With a script by Regina Guimarães, the film brings together actresses Isabel Ruth and Joana Bárcia – no strangers to this director's world – in a story about a depressed fash ...

The Uncertainty Principle (2002)

Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family. ...

O Delfim (2002)

A wealthy landowner, "The Dauphin," enjoys a decadent life of hunting, drinking, and womanizing. He oversees his estate, the Laguna, with his barren wife, his one-armed manservant, and his treasured guard dog. When a sportsman (the film's narrator) comes t ...

Rending (2001)

A philosophy-obsessed serial rapist stalks a university campus in broad daylight. ...

I’m Going Home (2001)

The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on ...

Man of the Crowds (2001)

Pawel Markowicz suffers from Stendhal syndrome and it is to Dr.Giordano that he tells his secret. ...

Aniversário (2000)

The anniversary, celebrating the thirty years of the marriage of Francisco and Leonor Teixeira, celebrated on their family farm. It is time to party and everyone party with the Teixeira's. Well, almost everyone. Ricardo, the youngest son, does not speak wi ...

The Heart's Root (2000)

Set in the Lisbon during the festivities of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lovers and the old town. The story is about Cato, a nationalist politician who is charismatic and unscrupulous. He obsessively pursues Silvia, a mystical and mysterious young ...

Moonfish (2000)

A summer film. About summers. Two seasons splitting it apart by half a dozen years, the youth years – time it takes its characters to realise they're getting lonely. Hellish summer ends and we're on a little fishing village, river-side, in Lisbon's south ...

Nights (2000)

The pain, the weakness, the silence, the despair. These are some of the feelings faced by a couple lost in drugs. Nights can be seen as the story of people who made mistakes in life, but who still continue to seek happiness. It is about the despair of hope ...

Erros Meus (2000)

Lourdes (2000)

The young, sickly girl Bernadette comes from a poverty-stricken family. When the Virgin Mary appears to her in a cavern near Lourdes, no one takes the girl seriously, even when she digs up a wellspring at the Virgin's instructions The local authorities eve ...

Ophelia Afar (2000)

Appassionate (1999)

Pina was born in Portugal but now lives in poor circumstances in Naples. Pina has two daughters, Rosa, who has been wearing a wedding dress since she was left stranded at the altar several years ago, and Caterina, who murdered a man who wronged her as he l ...

Three Bridges on the River (1999)

Arthur is a history teacher who lives alone in Paris after having broken up with Claire. He is a sensitive man, full of existential doubts and questions. He has to go to Lisbon to meet an eminent historian whose work is the subject of his thesis. Having ju ...

River of Gold (1999)

Carolina, an aging local grande dame who works at a crossing point on the titular river, marries another late-in-life character, the dredging-boat operator Antonio. Not long after their union, she becomes intensely jealous of Antonio's fondness for their w ...

The Mutants (1998)

Three homeless teenage rejects struggle to survive together. Of them, Andreia is pregnant, while Pedro and Ricardo hustle, steal and are exploited by a pornographer. ...

Inquietude (1998)

An anthology film drama featuring a poetic mirror structure based on existential identity. In "The Immortals," adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old father, and his 60-year-old son, contemplate senility and death. " ...

Guardian Angel (1998)

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 ...

Ossos (1997)

After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby's safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live. ...

Voyage to the Beginning of the World (1997)

Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth. ...

A Fachada (1996)

Short film. ...

Blind Man's Bluff (1994)

A blind beggar is robbed of his chest of money. The theft leads to a dramatic situation in the street where he begs every day. ...

Two Brothers, My Sister (1994)

This dark and intense drama follows the slow and painful destruction of a young, passive woman as she watches her family fall apart. Maria is the shy and dutiful daughter upon whose shoulders the family traumas have fallen. In addition to a regular job she ...

Pax (1994)

Franny (Amanda Plummer), an absent-minded American girl, is in Lisbon to deliver an important package. Unfortunately she has lost the address and only knows that the recipient's name is João. When she meets an old prostitute, Esmeralda, the two join force ...

Abraham's Valley (1993)

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 ...

Coma (1993)

Victim of a train accident, a man regains consciousness in the house of the woman who shared his compartment. ...

Cold Land (1992)

In the forties, in a little settlement lost amidst the mountains of Trás-os-Montes, Leonardo tries to survive by buying and selling marten and fox furs, dreaming of the day he'll close a big deal. ...

Alex (1991)

The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa. ...

Xavier (1991)

Xavier returns to Lisbon after a military stint, determined to lead a meaningful life, only to find his world closing in on him. ...

Malvadez (1990)

Coming from Fundão to Lisboa where he did conscription service, Matias found that the reality of the big city is not exactly how he remembers ...

Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale (1989)

Johnny Fortune (Damon Lowry) is no good to anyone, not mean, but just no good. Surrounded by violence and dishonesty, Johnny lives with Kate. Johnny messes up, he loses a lot of money, his girlfriend Kate's money. Alone, desperate and on the run from a cou ...

Hard Times (1988)

A film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel "Hard Times" set in a Portuguese industrial town of the 1980s. ...

Agosto (1988)

Summer of 1964. The professor Carlos and the couple Dário and Alda spend time together in the beach during vacations. Away from the colonial war, everything seems lost in time. ...

The Jester (1987)

Set four years after the Portuguese revolution and the simultaneous loss of the Portuguese empire in Africa, the story concerns a director who sells guns to finance his play. ...

The Mountains of the Moon (1987)

This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manuela de ...

The Conversation Is Over (1982)

The film was to be a documentary, but evolved during production to a fictional film. It nevertheless adheres strictly to the poems and letters exchanged by two of the most outstanding names of the Modernist Movement, Fernando Pessoa (in Lisbon) and Mário ...

H2S (1969)

Young student runs away from a 1984-esque dictatorship, lives for a while with a crazy girl in a surrealistic "igloo" in snowy wilderness and then returns to lead a revolution against the oppressive system. Sci-fi tale consistent with the political climate ...

Il rapporto (1968)

A film by Lionello Massobrio. ...

Oedipus Rex (1967)

In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son - and the scene moves to antiquity, where the baby is taken into the desert to be killed. He is rescued, given the name Oedipus, and brought up by the King and Que ...

Change of Life (1967)

After completing his military service in the Angolan War of Independence, Adelino goes back to the Portuguese fishing village he calls home, only to find that the woman he loves has married his brother. Overcome by bitterness, he sets off to find work in t ...

Transfert per Camera verso Virulentia (1967)

On a theatrical work by Aldo Braibanti, the special effects used in an attempt to construct a new visual grammar capable of describing "the new geography of boundless perceptions and imaginaries, the emergence of memories from the very distant phylogenetic ...

Sunday Afternoon (1966)

Reflections on life and death unfold through the eyes of Jorge, the head doctor of the Haematology Department, whose world is plunged into despair when he falls in love with Clarisse, a woman suffering from advanced leukemia. ...

Here I Read (1966)

A boy just out of college is bored, walks around around and meet people. ...

The Green Years (1963)

Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, his working-class values collide with the bourgeois trappin ...

Where Is This Street? or With No Before or After (2022)

From our window one can see a set of the film The Green Years, directed by Paulo Rocha in 1963. This was our starting point: guided by Rocha's gaze, we look back at the places of that film. The successive geological, urbanistic and social strata of Lisbon, ...