Portuguese cinema is better known at international festivals than in cinemas: an auteur cinema, often slow and poetic, that has produced some of the most original directors in Europe, with small budgets and great freedom.
Comedies and the Estado Novo
In the 1930s and 1940s, under the dictatorship, Portuguese popular cinema enjoyed the era of the Lisbon comedies, light films set in working-class neighbourhoods, with beloved actors such as Vasco Santana and António Silva: A Canção de Lisboa (1933), O Pátio das Cantigas (1942) and O Leão da Estrela (1947) are still shown on television and quoted by heart. The regime also used cinema for propaganda, while fado entered films with the great Amália Rodrigues.
Manoel de Oliveira
The most extraordinary figure is Manoel de Oliveira, born in Porto in 1908 and died in 2015 aged 106, still working: the oldest director in film history. He debuted in 1931 with the silent documentary Douro, Faina Fluvial, about work on the river, and in 1942 made Aniki-Bóbó, a story of children in Porto's alleys, considered a forerunner of neorealism. The regime long hindered his work; only after 1974 could he film steadily, making dozens of films, often based on literature, such as Francisca and Vale Abraão, with unique elegance and rigour.
Cinema Novo and beyond
In the 1960s, Portuguese Cinema Novo, with Paulo Rocha's Os Verdes Anos (1963), turned young directors' eyes to the country's reality. After the revolution, directors such as João César Monteiro, with his irreverent character João de Deus, and João Botelho built personal and provocative bodies of work.
Today's directors
Today Portuguese cinema is more acclaimed than ever. Pedro Costa has spent years portraying the lives of Cape Verdeans in Lisbon's neighbourhoods, in films such as Colossal Youth and Vitalina Varela, winner of the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2019. Miguel Gomes won over critics with Tabu (2012) and the Arabian Nights trilogy, and won Best Director at Cannes in 2024 for Grand Tour. Other names include João Pedro Rodrigues, Teresa Villaverde, Rita Azevedo Gomes and João Salaviza. Portuguese animation is also admired worldwide: the short film Ice Merchants was nominated for an Oscar in 2023.
Portugal on the big screen
Lisbon has been the set of many foreign films, from Wim Wenders's Lisbon Story (1994), with music by Madredeus, to Night Train to Lisbon (2013), based on Pascal Mercier's novel. For film lovers, Lisbon's Cinemateca Portuguesa screens archive films every day, and the IndieLisboa and DocLisboa festivals, the Fantasporto fantasy film festival in Porto and the short film festival in Vila do Conde are major events. See also Portuguese literature.