Portugal 1872. The Emperor of Brazil, Pedro II, travels to the city of Porto, and stays at the Grand Hotel du Louvre, property of Maria Henriqueta de Mello Lemos e Alvelos. In the present day, the attempt to make a film about this episode becomes an invocation. Maria Henriqueta is with us. Memories, sounds and sensations take over the screen, and help build an emotional geography of our invisible protagonist. This is a phantasmagoria of the senses. A good haunting.

Nuno Ochôa Pimentel (b. 1992) is a filmmaker and film distributor from Portugal. He studied cinema at Escola Superior Artística do Porto and screenwriting at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2019 he was part of the Locarno Film Festival's Industry Academy and in 2022 participated in a residency promoted by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Escola das Artes - Universidade Católica Portuguesa, where he developed the short film MARIA HENRIQUETA WAS HERE. He lives in Berlin.

He does not remember much from that time. Things have faded, like the color of a painting after too much light. The only thing that bothers him is this music. It keeps popping up... He thinks he forget what it meant. All he knows, for sure, is that he cannot get it out of his head.

He is a film producer and director, member of EFA and alumnus of Berlinale Talents and Locarno Spring Academy. He studied in workshops with Werner Herzog, Radu Jude and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His film productions were featured in more than 150 festivals all around the world including Cannes Quinzaine, Locarno, Venice SIC@SIC, Camerimage, Rotterdam IFFR. His short film "Happy New Year, Jim" premiered at Cannes Film Festival during the 54. Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. In 2023, he took part in Locarno Spring Academy with Radu Jude where he shot "Eschaton Ad"...

A seagull, a dog, a child, a call to prayer; Looking through a window, the corridor of a train, the wall of a medina; Everyday life is momentarily paused through the eyes of a stranger in an unknown land.

A golfer fails to strike, a soccer team plays against itself and a rally co-driver faces an identity crisis. They are surrounded by an audience unable to act. Shot in sports video games, the film "A World At Stake" turns the ordering principles of victory and defeat upside down and negotiates social roles between individual sovereignty and collective passivity. In the face of catastrophe, a feeling of political powerlessness remains. Nothing less than the world is at stake.

The media guerilla Total Refusal is a collective of artists, researchers, and filmmakers who upcycle the resources of mainstream video games to create political narratives in the form of videos, interventions, performances, and lectures. Their work has been screened at over 250 film and art festivals and exhibited at various spaces. The films premiered at Berlinale '20, Locarno '22 und '23. Since their foundation in 2018, Total Refusal have been awarded with more than 50 prizes and honorary mentions, amongst them Locarnos Best Short Direction Award 2022 and Best Shortfilm at the European Film Awards 2023.