An immigrant mother, hurting from a backache, calls for her son to help carry her groceries home. Along their way, they talk about the future through the past, returning to all of their disagreements, disillusionments, rancor and resentments.

Sofia lives a strangely isolated life in the old apartment where she grew up in Lisbon. Mariama arrives from Guinea-Bissau, having been hired by Sofia’s mother to help take care of the house and her son. The appearance of Bobô, Mariama’s younger sister, awakens in Sofia the desire to take a stand. The forced cohabitation between Sofia and Mariama forces them to confront their own private ghosts.

Cecília is sixteen years old. She has a prosthesis in her left hand and a new love, but she does not have her mother's attention.

During the war of in-dependency Evita moves from Lisbon to Mozambique to marry Luís. She slowly discovers how different and disturbing life is in a country of war and when her husband is send on a military mission she starts to fight loneliness. Over time she finds out more about her husband and Mozambique than she would have imagined in her peaceful European home. Racism, violence, injustice and fatalism make life unbearable...

Vita, a young and beautiful African woman learns that finding love and happiness need not come at the sacrifice of one's identity.

Done in the style of an African folk tale, this film, a collaboration between European and African countries, is said to be among the most elaborate, high tech film in African film. Exquisitely photographed and filled with archetypal figures to create a poetic look at nature's revenge against those who would exploit her. It is set in the forest village of Amanha Lundju, a place where the birth of children is celebrated by the planting of a tree. The trees are considered spiritual twins. But for every tree planted, the rapacious state destroys many more for firewood and lumber.

The film tells the tale of Iala, whose authority over his two sons, Raul and Bedan, is shaken. Raul has left to study in a seminary in the big city, where unknown to anyone, he has joined the liberation movement. Meanwhile, younger son, Bedan is rebelling against every possible tradition, even eyeing his father's young bride-to-be.

A beautiful, intelligent and flirtatious young girl, Yonta, is secretly in love with a friend of her parents, Vicente, a hero of the war of independence. Vicente is unaware of her passion as she is of the love of a young man who sends her anonymous love letters.

The story of a woman who searches through the country for her husband, a resistant, while the war for independence is raging. She finds him at last and saves his life. When peace finally arrives, they have to learn how to be together again and start living in a destroyed land.

Bejo, 12 years old, lives with his brother Mario, a sculptor. Having heard the news on the radio his dream is to see the Bissau carnival, but he has been forbidden to do so. He escapes, wanders throught the forest, crosses rice fields until the river next to the city. His brother will look for him during the carnival...