João Canijo

A provincial Portuguese family has to deal with the Russian Mafia after a deal went wrong.

Lúcia is misbegotten, unloved and the eternal widow of her own father. A cry of rage in bodily form, she is mad, maltreated and humbled. She wears mourning in remembrance of her mother's crime and betrayal, and gives vent to her inconsolable pain to make sure there's no rest or respite for the killers of her father. She lives in hope of her brother's return so she can fulfill her promise of avenging her father's blood.

During one night, a Portuguese teenager, Alvaro, loses his life in a fight between a youth gang and the cops in a suburb of Paris. Cidalia, a 36 year old cleaning woman, his mother, decides to defy the code of silence of the Portuguese community and tries to find the truth. She losses her friends, her job and her family but gains a life.

Dalila is a middle-age, married woman who is still attractive, too attractive, for her rural husband - who is proud to show her off, but awfully jealous of her. Her trips to the capital to see a doctor (she thinks she has breast cancer) put her in contact with flashy clothes, and shoes, and then she goes wild. She will lead a young truck driver into lust, and worse sins, as Dalila progresses from white shoes to red shoes, and then, fatal black shoes.

Maria is a sweet child. She has no father and does not like her mother. She has a boyfriend who is a bandit who would like to change his class. There are two more bandits: a very tall singer and a guy who is a very short and a full of life's experiences. Neither of these two do much thinking, one even less than the other.

Rita is an 18-year-old Portuguese teen who is upset when her Parisian cousin Ann comes to visit. The two teenage girls quarrel with each other, and Rita and her boyfriend Antonio argue. Soon, Ann and Antonio fall in love, and the jealous Rita tries to break up the happy couple, and Antonio takes her back when Ann finally returns to Portugal.

Images and sounds expose the duality of Portugal during the days of WW2: a peaceful, god-loving, rural country, providing an escape route for over one hundred thousand European refugees to the Americas; and a political and cultural elite that disguised their Nazi inclinations just enough to play its neutral role in international politics. (imdb)

The realities of life are harsh in Padre Cruz, a slum on the edge of Lisbon, and its inhabitants struggle with violence and poverty. João Canijo's latest feature portrays life in this decrepit Portuguese suburb through the story of a family attempting to transcend its hardships. (imdb)

Caxinas, fishing district of Vila do Conde. The relationship between the fishermen in the area and their wives is based on their trust and mutual dependence for survival. The women trust and depend on the fisherman to make a living and the fishermen trust and depend on the woman to care for the home and family life. In this film about love, Canijo follows a group of women in their day-to-day. (Público)

An intense entanglement of five women and their relationship, mostly mother-daughter.

Five women are running an old hotel. Guests arrive over the course of a weekend and are drawn into a web of ongoing conflict. (imdb)