Founded in 2010 by António Borges
Correia, Keep Eyes Open is a production company for independent
films and content for television and digital platforms. The
company was born with an essential motivation: to produce
documentary/ethnographic films focused on populations in remote
places in Portugal and to reconstruct their own narratives,
where the characters represent themselves in a kind of
mise-en-abyme. The content has evolved into other concepts
without ever forgetting the root of its foundation. The films
produced by Keep Eyes Open have been screened at several
festivals: Hong Kong / Gijón / Mexico City / Buenos Aires /
IndieLisboa / DocLisboa / Cinéma du Réel (Paris) / London /
Macau / Leipzig / Belo Horizonte (Brazil) / Santiago, Chile /
Curitiba (Brazil) / Quebec. Some of these films were distributed
by MySpotLight Independent for Amazon (Europe/USA), Google Play,
Tubi, Xumo, Pelidom+, Future Today, Filmzie, Popsy on Plex, VA
Media. Distributed for DocAllianceFilms. Distributed by Minerva
Pictures for Amazon Prime. Distributed for Filmin and Bounty
Films (Australia).
Born in Lisbon (1971). Graduated in
Theatre at the Lisbon Conservatory. With participation in Film,
Theatre and Television. Attended IFICT and the Theatre course at the
Higher School of Theatre and Cinema. In Theatre, she worked with
Ávila Costa, Bruno Bravo, João Lourenço, André Murraças, Sandra
Faleiro, José Boavida. In film, she worked with Manuel Mozos, Carlos
Saboga, Rita Nunes, António Borges Correia and Marta Pessoa. During
her professional activity, she attended several European schools;
Lee Strasberg and The Royal School of Speech and Drama (London) and
Commedia Dell Arte in Reggio Emilia (Italy) with Antonio Fava. Since
2011 has worked with Keep Eyes Open, collaborating not only as an
actress in more than 5 feature films, but also as artistic director,
co-author, set designer and costume designer. Nominated for best
actress in some of these works. She is the co-writer of the film “In
The Woods”, art director and producer at Keep Eyes Open.
Born in Almada, 1966. I started to be
interested in cinema at a very young age, viewing all film genres
at the theaters in the city of birth. After fulfilling the
mandatory military service, I found the Higher School of Theater
and Cinema in 1989 to attend the Cinema Class. I did the
internship in the film “A Caixa” by Manoel de Oliveira. The short
films appeared in 1998, with “Golpe de Asa/ Flying Away” that
travelled through some festivals, Locarno included. Since 2007, I
began to explore a documentary language where the characters
represent themselves, a mise-en-abyme idea. Several films, based
on this concept, runned through several international festivals.
“Os Olhos de André / Andre´s Eyes” is the most traveled and the
best known film.
Clara, actress, 50 years old. Recently unemployed, she lives in a
clandestine neighborhood and has just received news that the house
where she lives has been sold at auction. Without family and
support from fellow artists who are equally in precarious
situations, Clara seeks a dignified life, but instead of facing
reality, she goes into a trance, on an escapist journey, between
bizarre visions and incomplete messages. It is in an occasional
event, where lonely lives collide, that she returns to reality in
a glimmer of hope.
Alice, a recently widowed director, is alone on her grief after
her young daughter leaves home. Alice clings to the only structure
she has, a fragile foundation at risk of collapsing: an essay film
project, about first loves, dependent on funding. Suddenly we
enter in another dimension, another place and without prior notice
we are in the film conceived by the director.
The Bodiless Woman it’s a film based on women’s testimonies,
victims of domestic violence. The statements are filmed in a
stripped room, but we don’t see the Woman. We see a door opening,
closing, the chair moving, but we can not see the Woman. It's a
film about the victim’s invisibility. Joana is the character who
represents the real testimonies, a double that lives the violence
consequences, a woman that left the world, becoming an antisocial
being. Lives from the Minimum Income. Sleeps in a poor Guest
House. She volunteers in a kennel. The days are all the same. But
the insecurities of the past do not abandon her, the husband and
daughter are always present in her dreams that follow her in a
constant tension. Joana lives with the ghosts of the past.
Inevitably, she realizes she has to return to the real world.
Joel, who also lives in the Guest House, helps her whenever he
can, but the Guest House owner threatens to expel her whenever
there is a day's late payment. This man represents a kind of
violence continuity ... The Bodiless Woman is an intervention film
about the violence perpetuation and, above all, about the victim’s
dignity.
A family stuck at home during the 2021 Pandemic. It's time to
look for records, letters, videos... memories.
After seeing his mother and younger siblings emigrate, Hugo
imagines a movie about his loneliness as a way to solve this
unexpected shock. He meets a director and proposes his idea, a
film where he will represent his role with the real characters
that surround him. The mother, the school and the grandfather
refuse to participate. Hugo is increasingly alone and goes into
depression, something that is ruining his relationships with
friends and girlfriend. He can not sleep, he's late for class,
he's not interested in anything ... "Lonesome Boy" deals with the
consequences of emigration by the eyes of a teenager and ist’s
about his own loneliness, how he solved it, how he survived ...
Maria da Luz is almost blind. She's been waiting for cataract
surgery for 3 years. António, an old fisherman, takes care of her,
hiding the secret of an old love. Miguel, a mysterious boy,
wanders through the city, watching daily for Maria's house. Luís,
the mayor, seeks to solve the problem of hundreds of people with
cataracts in the Municipality. Ana, Maria's daughter visits her
mother. Despite their misfortune, they seek to redeem themselves
under the eyes of António and Miguel. Maria da Luz is not alone.
A father tries to rebuild his life, after a separation, to
welcome his youngest son and rejoin a family. The people who lived
the same story in the same roles follow the suggestions that a new
fiction creates from what has already been lived, giving us to
know, through the cinema, a real life of a real country. But it is
the luminous eyes of the young Andre to gather his great focus:
what he lost in his family, his desire to see his talent for
professional football recognized, and what he protects, from his
various family figures, in his young look.
Marrow is the essential part. It is the element that remakes
time, people and relationships. The essential part is a "journey"
that passes through bone marrow donors and receptors, in an
exercise on Time, narrated by their comments, in a space inhabited
by photographic memories. A surgical portrait of Time suspended in
an imaginary Space.
António is eighteen years old and he’s profoundly deaf. He wants
to study directing, outside of Portugal, to become a filmmaker and
make movies for the deaf and hearing impaired. This is his dream,
but every dream has a price. In his case, self-doubt and
uncertainty about the deaf community to which he belongs. At the
same time, he experiences his first love with Irina: a young deaf
girl. She doesn’t understand António’s desire to leave his school
and country. For the first time, the world is collapsing around
António. Losing the world to conquer the universe, where deaf and
hearing individuals find themselves in a single and same gesture
Phones, internet, cable TV, GPS, social networking, live in the
era of full communication, in a few years radically changed the
physiognomy of our day to day. But the mountains are still in
place, with rivers and streams to run obstinately to the sea. And
as stones, water, the trees, there are also men who remain
unyielding in the most inhospitable places in the deepest valleys
and isolated. These men will change only by death. In a remote
valley of the Peneda mountain there is a man who has changed.
Departed. We need to go get him to give him a funeral. The
mortician Olegario, accompanied by Raul and Carlos. A ride in the
pick-up (there is no other way to reach the target) and go up the
mountain. It will be a service for a long journey.
Forty years later six ex-fighters, that had been together in the
War in Africa, keep meeting. They know that, during those
meetings, talking about the War is therapy to exorcize nightmares
and ghosts. What keeps them alive is what destroyed them:
Memories. Life has never been the same. They had twenty two years
old when they met at the War. Time has stopped there. Today, they
only exist when they are together.
Reboleiro Village, northern interior of Portugal. In Santa
Catarina live 103 old people who have worked all their lives in
agriculture, in their lands. Most of the old have lost the notion
of Time in a Space that is strange to them. There is a routine of
friendships, a willingness to communicate, an impatience to be
alone. They call each other, they pray, they walk in the
corridors, they wait ...
Documentary about a Portuguese actress, Isabel de Castro.
A couple goes on a honeymoon. Lost on the way… and found
themselves 50 years later ...
A trainee apprentice meets a girl during the crossing the Tagus
crossing and they live an adventure of suspicious smiles,
misunderstood sentences and occasional robberies.
This is a story inspired by a real case, but it aims to go far
beyond that, reflecting on issues such as fatherhood, family,
education, social ethics and the perception of reality, but, above
all, the unlimited (and therefore sometimes irrational) human
capacity to fight for what we believe in.
Six characters, six secrets. Six lies, six reasons, where there
are always two sides of the story. Santiago is a priest with a
promising career. However, everything changes when he falls in
love with Maria Manuel. A forbidden love that will put Santiago's
career at risk, as well as his vocation and faith in God.