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João de Deus is the manager of an ice-cream shop owned by an ex-prostitute, Paraíso dos Gelados (Ice-Cream Paradise). Through a unmoved desire of perfection, he seeks, through cleansing and purity to attain heaven. The surrounding world, however, does not comply with his decaying vision of lust and decay as a way of achieving his purpose.

A story of initiation and struggle with adulthood: on vacation at the inn of an aunt by the sea, Miguel meets Luísa, fisherman João and Dr. Fernando, three characters that will mark the entrance of his first "stone in his pocket.

Laura lives in Vouzela with her husband who is a lot older than her. When her brother Nuno visits her, he realizes that Laura does not have a happy life.

A young woman visiting Paris, misses the last bus home, finds herself stranded on the outskirts of Paris. Entering a local club, she meets a troubled drug addict.

Lisbon, Portugal, mid-1990s. Three siblings, a young woman and two young men, are living together, careless of the future, or even the present. They love each other, but one day they go separate ways. When Maria does need help, the three siblings will join again - but a trifle too late.

The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa.

Franny (Amanda Plummer), an absent-minded American girl, is in Lisbon to deliver an important package. Unfortunately she has lost the address and only knows that the recipient's name is João. When she meets an old prostitute, Esmeralda, the two join forces and begin cruising the town at night, across the streets and the local bars, meeting Lisbon's unconventional night fauna, to try to find João.

Zéfiro is a film about Lisbon, the last of the Mediterranean cities, condemned to the Atlantic by the vast estuary that separates it from the "other band".

Three short stories by a great poet and esoterist, Fernando Pessoa, dealing with the themes of life, ascesis, and death - originally brought to the stage at the 1989 Avignon Festival: "Diálogos no Jardim do Palácio" (Dialogues in the Palace's Garden), "Salomé, Sakyamuni", and "A Morte do Príncipe" (The Prince's Death).

Isotta, a poor and overweight girl, works as a seamstress in a popular district of Naples. She spends her time dreaming to escape from the harsh reality.

The Seara Velha is one of the most secluded mountain villages in Trás-os-Montes, at a time when the Napoleonic troops are already being routed, and trying to pass the high mountains towards Spain. Sporadic shots in the distance testimony that there is some opposition conducted by the local men, ambushed in the hills, against the retreating Napoleonic army. The village, a mere handful of houses roughly built of granite, is deserted. Well, almost. There are the two young French soldiers who have deserted their army, and decide to vent their anger, and hunger, on the chickens and sheep without a shepherd that run about in the main street. A short widow, hidden in the church, sees the rude behaviour of the two miscreants towards the icon of Santiago, of which they break the head off. She could prevent them from desecrating the church wine, by instructing her teenage son to bury the bottles in the cemetery, aided by two younger children. Then, she shows herself at the tavern, and induces them to feel confident to the point of drinking a little too much. When they try to have their way with her, and even with her son, the good Christian feels no qualms to dispatch them with a flick-blade. When the peace returns to the village, she shows the priest where she buried the head of saint Inacio - and the French soldiers' bodies.