这是一部纪录片，纪录了葡萄牙多罗河横穿波尔多市的时候两岸的情景；有工人们卸船、装船的场面，女工劳动时的气氛，同时也记录了多罗河上的桥梁与缓缓流动的河水。写实却不乏浪漫，充满生活旨趣。
奥利维拉作为导演的第一部作品，受瓦尔特鲁特曼《柏林：城市交响曲》影响，用父亲购买的摄影相机拍摄而成。本片受巴罗斯助理导演发掘而得到放映，成为了这一时期葡萄牙电影的代表作。

In 1992 Oliveira made O Dia do Desespero, which deals with the last days and suicide of Romantic novelist Camilo Castelo Branco and is based largely on the writer's letters. Most of it was filmed in the house where Castelo Branco in fact committed suicide. The film opens, midway through the credits, with a 50-second static shot of a pen-and-ink portrait of the writer. Other portraits, always shot with a static camera, punctuate the film's narrative, lending it a documentary tone from the outset.
The spectator might expect, at this point, that the “story” will now begin. However, the man seated at the desk stands up, faces the camera, and introduces himself as the actor Mário Barroso, who will be playing the role of Camilo Castelo Branco (and who played Castelo Branco in the earlier Francisca), and offers information about the writer. A bit later in the film, Ana Madruga, the actress who plays Castelo Branco's companion Ana Plácido, does the same thing, at the same time briefly serving as a “guide” to the Castelo Branco museum where the film was shot. Despite the existence of these ostensibly “documentary” elements – the house, the portraits, the actors presenting themselves as such – O Dia de Desespero, Oliveira insists, is a fiction film, but it is one that refuses to deceive the spectator (in Baecque and Parsi, 56) by pretending to be what it is not. In O Dia de Desespero and other films, Manoel de Oliveira questions the ontological status of such terms as “fiction” and “documentary” and challenges, through the pursuit of his own cinematic vision, some of the filmic and narrative conventions that have come to dominate mainstream commercial cinema. His films also challenge the spectator to think about, rather than passively accept, that which is shown on the screen.

José and Roberto are friends, and they decide to go hunting but without guns, so that no accident will happen. As they stroll and talk, one of them falls into a hole in a hidden marshland. His friend runs away, and manages to gather a number of men that were in the vicinity. They form a human chain to pull the victim out, but their affliction mounts, as they have no strategy for doing it, and they can't understand each other.

迈克尔（约翰·马尔科维奇 John Malkovich 饰）是一位专门研究莎士比亚的美国学者，某日，为了得到一份珍贵的资料，迈克尔带着妻子海伦（凯瑟琳·德纳芙 Catherine Deneuve 饰），从巴黎前往阿拉碧达修道院拜访，在那里，夫妻两人结识了修道院的管理人波塔（路易斯·米格尔·辛特拉 Luís Miguel Cintra 饰）。
刚一见面，波塔就被优雅而又神秘的海伦深深吸引，为了能够得到海伦，波塔特意安排了年轻性感的女孩皮耶黛（雷奥勒·希尔维拉 Leonor Silveira 饰）作为迈克尔的助理。波塔的这一招果然奏效了，海伦因为迈克尔整日埋首于学术之中而感到大为的不满。

实验性的叙事手法，奥利维拉缝织了三个故事，构成了一个强烈互文的结构。该片属于理性电影的范畴，探讨了生死的平衡和自我扬弃的神秘。 他重塑了摄影棚的概念 戏剧时空的引用

Based on one of the most important and popular works of Portuguese literature, Doomed Love was recently revealed to North American audiences as one of de Oliveira’s greatest works. Closely following Camilo Castelo Branco’s eponymous novel from 1862, de Oliveira creates a radical and unprecedented fusion of theatre, literature and cinema, which, according to Jonathan Rosenbaum, is rivaled only by von Stroheim’s Greed. In this doleful tale of forbidden passion, the doomed love of the title belongs to Teresa Albuquerque and Simão Botelho, whose feuding aristocratic families pave the way for a deadly ménage- à-trois when another woman steps in to take Teresa’s place. De Oliveira credits Straub-Huillet’s Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach as one of the major influences on the film, which is told through a bold series of tableaux vivants. Like the other works in his “Tetralogy,” Doomed Love makes great use of omniscient narration and a host of distancing effects (static camera, lack of close-ups), “paring things down to the unspectacular, so that when something dramatic does flare up . . . the result is tremendous” (Elliott Stein). The film was originally shot on 16mm and made for Portuguese TV where it unsurprisingly floundered and was subjected to scorn. But its mythic status grew and when a 35mm blow-up was theatrically released some time later, this film maudit was hailed as a European masterpiece, ensuring that de Oliveira was “recognized as one of the great modern filmmakers” (Randal Johnson). No cinephile can afford to miss this date with Doomed Love. (Cinematheque Ontario)

During the century of the Spanish Gold, Doña Prouhèze, wife of a nobleman, deeply loves Don Rodrigo, who is forced to leave Spain and go to America. Meanwhile Prouhèze is sent to Africa to rule the city of Mogador. Ten years later Rodrigo leaves America and travels to Africa in search of Prouhèze to find out that she died and eventually meeting her daughter.

Not satisfied with just taking excursions through Europe's ancient landmarks (A Talking Picture, 28th HKIFF), this time the prolific, 96-years-old Portuguese director plunges us into a medieval Hamletian intrigue among Lisbon's most famous monasteries. A young monarch is obsessed with leaving his legacy by creating a mythical, utopian Fifth Empire, while his people are suffering from poverty. Is he insane? Or is he guided by the Holy Cobbler? Based upon the real-life mysteries behind King Sebastião, who perished in 1578 during a crusade in Morocco, this controversial parable redresses the Crusades as an inevitable clash between the West and Islam.
每年不來向迪奧里菲拉朝朝聖，就不是過電影節似的。幸好這個電影老將勇猛如故。前作《大浪淘沙》（28屆）娓娓談今日的恐怖主義襲地球，此作反其道而行，以古諷今重構十六世紀歷史神話裏好戰君王的心路歷程。神話在葡萄牙家傳戶曉：塞巴斯蒂安大帝為了圓其雄圖大國夢，不顧國民水深火熱，也不理朝中大臣的勸阻、弄臣的嘲笑，喪心病狂遠征回教徒。迪奧利菲拉招來大帝的心魔-擁有催眠異能的神秘角色，長期失眠的大帝終於睡了一覺，之後的一切，應驗了夢中預言。奇怪是回教神話裏，也存在同一人物，他騎?白馬來驅走惡魔，維護世界和平！
Source: 29th HKIFF 2005

导演奥利维哈上溯四百年，发现耶稣会教士维瓦拉，找到互通的心灵和发人深省的声音。
维瓦拉在葡萄牙出生，巴西长大，但思想开明，经常为印第安人发声控诉奴隶制与殖民者的不是。其德才与辩才誉满宗教界，却不为祖国所容飘泊终生。他传世的讲道内容，连非宗教读者亦深受打动。导演以其百年炉火，把传奇提炼得不带多余杂质。

吉尔伯特·瓦伦斯是一位十分成功的戏剧演员。他的表演天赋和漫长的演艺生涯确保他能够得到那些伟大的角色。一天晚上，他结束演出后，经纪人亦是多年的好友乔治给他带来了一个不幸的消息，他的妻子、女儿和女婿在一场交通事故中遇难身亡。
不久，他的生活又恢复了表面的平静。他的时间分成了两部分：戏剧和他溺爱的孙子。他目前的角色是莎士比亚的《暴风雨》中的普罗斯旺。他还维持着他的老习惯：每天在咖啡馆里一边喝咖啡一边看报纸，连续不断的排练和演出……
他的经纪人给他一个新的工作：主演一部充斥着性、毒品和暴力的电视电影。虽然报酬很有诱惑力，但吉尔伯特却只感到愤怒和一种遭背叛的感觉。作为一名很有声望的演员，他曾经出演过很多演员所最希望得到的角色。他又何苦降低身份去演这样一部粗俗的电视呢？难道是为钱吗？他决定坚持自己的原则，毫不含糊地说：不！
在剧中扮演他的死对头米兰达的年轻女演员为他的魅力所征服，只是他已无心再开始一段感情……

A true story of a doctor and his wife who went on a journey in order to prove that discoverer Christopher Columbus was in fact Portuguese.

Lisbon, a normal day in one of the typical narrow streets of the capital of Portugal. In a small house, in a dirty little street, in a dark corner of the city lives a poor blind beggar, which earns his living through the selling of useless trinkets. The only curious situation is that the blind man keeps all his savings in a little black box donated to him by the government. It is through this box that the poor man proves his visual handicap. And it is this same BOX (a CAIXA) that is envied by all the blind man´s lazy neighbours who are jealous of the little money that is given to the poor man. The life on this (intentionally) excessive dramatic small world is suddenly turned upside down when someone steals the BOX of the blind man unleashing a chain of events that will have a surprising end.

剧情
1974年，在北非的葡萄牙殖民地，独立战争此起彼伏，进行镇压的葡萄牙士兵疲惫不堪，在战斗间隙，他们熟悉历史的少尉对他们讲起了葡萄牙的历史：葡萄牙最初被称为鲁西塔尼亚，从公元前2世纪起，开始被罗马人统治。比利亚托是鲁西塔尼亚地方原始部落的一个首领。在公元前147－139年间多次领导当地人起来反抗罗马人的统治。后来他被罗马将军西庇阿收买的一个叛徒暗杀。从罗马时代，十字军时代，到哥伦布航海时代的故事都在少尉的讲述中呈现出来。最后少尉在与游击队的战斗中负伤死去。他们终于明白，任何一个民族都是不可以被征服的。

Manoel de Oliveira shows us what the evolution of energy represents, through a retrospective of the last century, exploring the three technics that EDP uses in order to produce electricity: hydric, wind, and solar.