The City of Lisbon sleeps, but there are still some lit windows. One of these windows is Mercury—a boy, a God. Every night, he stays up collecting messages and recordings from different human dreams. Real people describe some of their recurring or most memorable dreams: scary nightmares, love stories, premonitions. Through accessing these personal and deep dreams as if by magic, and creating a cosmic connection with these characters, Mercury learns what it’s like to be human and to feel.

“See you next year!” a Portuguese fire warden says as he dismantles his control equipment at the end of the season. Humans and nature in southern Europe may be used to forest fires, but that does not change the facts: The ever more massive conflagrations are caused by climate change. We have long been living in the age of fire. In the Portuguese interior, a forest fire has just devastated a large area. Wounded nature is silent, not a single bird is heard, only the wind that makes the charred tree trunks rustle. But the vegetation recovers astonishingly fast. Where all life seemed to be gone, greenery soon sprouts from the ruined trees. The residents of the affected region are engaged in the reconstruction with great respect for their natural environment. Because plants, too, are sentient creatures. In quiet, almost melancholic, but also hopeful images, the film pays tribute to the strength of the trees and illustrates how essential it would be for humanity to learn to live in harmony with nature again.

“Catalog of a Homeless City" takes us to Porto, focusing on the housing crisis in 2024. It is an installation intended to serve as a catalog of a city sold out. Where every corner features a new house turned into a guest house or Airbnb, and each new construction site becomes a hotel. Where do the citizens of Porto live now?

Angolan director and screenwriter Pocas Pascoal reminds us that it’s time for a change, proposing through this film a look at colonialism, capitalism, and their impact on global biodiversity. We observe that the destruction of the ecosystem goes back a long way and is already underway through land exploitation, big game hunting, and the exploitation of man by man.