Major James Prentis VC is a British spy of World War II and war hero who goes under the code name of "Shuttlecock". Alienated from his family and children, he ends up in a mental institution in Lisbon, Portugal.

It is the end of summer and Isabel is a relationship with Diogo. She don't quite know what she wants from her life going forward as her father gets sick.

The relationship between António and Ruth ends unexpectedly when Ruth decides to live with Pedro, António's best friend. António doesn't fight back and lets himself drown. From the woods come Violeta and Gaspar, two strange beings, a mixture of fairies, demons and guardian angels, who help António overcome his depression. With the thunders the two characters return to their domains. And life goes on.

There is a long night when Hugo, a civil servant, is sitting on the stairs of the Ministry where he works. He can’t face going home. The images of the mysterious 8 mm films he found in António’s house after he passed away keep coming back to his mind. Hugo remembers the day when Antonio, his superior at the Ministry, told him that he was going to die. Indirectly, Antonio seemed to want to tell him something about Hugo himself. Hugo’s desire to understand what had remained unsaid between the two of them, triggers other memories from the past. Hugo unexpectedly thinks back on the last time he saw the woman he loved, Adriana, and relives once more what he feels has been his unlived life.

Dina (Maria Santiago) is a teenager brought up by her grandmother, employed as a housekeeper for a fairly well-off family. Since Dina only has her grandmother, she spends her time fantasizing about her life and reading comic-book love stories -- activities that do nothing to improve her dim perspective of reality. Due to these handicaps and her own inexperience, she gets involved with Django (Luis Lucas), a shady character who decides to use her as bait to attract men and then rob them. One day when both are in a taxi with robbery in mind, the driver gets suspicious so Django shoots him, and so does Dina. She escapes and runs away -- though it seems like she has learned too little too late. This story unfolds against a time of upheaval in Portugal (mid-1970s) when the military government is formulating a constitution and social changes are happening everywhere.

2009 film by João Mário Grilo

在Botelho的<想做美国总统的女人>(2003)和这部里选了很久,最后决定选这部成名作,其实两部都很幽默,他是葡萄牙当代最好的超现实喜剧片导演. Maybe the best Portuguese movie ever done, "Tráfico" is a sad, sad portrait of the modern Portugal and (if there is such a thing, since Portuguese mentality seems have not changed in 800 years), in spite of its sarcastic, even surrealistic mood, a very dark and dejected film, at least for Portuguese viewers. Very funny too (yet,with a kind of humor whose nuances risks sometimes to escape unnoticed by foreign ears), with some of the more sharp-witted sayings and situations I ever saw in cinema. The dialogue with the Portuguese culture it's ever present, making of it a movie that just can be fully understood by an autochton. Notwithstanding - don't miss this masterpiece.

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 de Sá-Carneiro (in Paris). Their endless conversation was dramatically and suddenly terminated.

The tragedy and comedy in Carlo's life begins, grows and ends like the tragedy and comedy of Portugal. In the company of his close friend, João da Ega, allegedly a brilliant writer, Carlos, with his idle existence as an aristocratic doctor, spends his time to enjoying friends and lovers. Until he falls in love. She is a new character in this revolutionary novel. It's a vertiginous passion that goes beyond that past gloominess to reach a new and darker abyss, incest.

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.