This year Portuguese cinema is presented with two films – the award-winning existential humorous drama Cats Don’t Have Vertigo (Os gatos não têm vertigens) by the director António-Pedro Vasconcelos and the satirical burlesque The Portuguese Falcon (Capitão Falcão) co-written and directed by João Leitão. Veteran of Portuguese film Vasconcelos, who has half a century of filmmaking behind him ever since the period of Portuguese new film, directed Cats Don’t Have Vertigo (Os gatos não têm vertigens), an unpretentious emotional and empathic melodramatic story that is taking place in Lisbon. Its protagonist is the compassionate older woman Rosa (portrayed by the fantastic, primarily TV actress, Maria do Céu Guerra), who, after a sudden death of her beloved husband with whom she remains in contact through his ghost (which is nevertheless not a fantastic element) meets a homeless teenager Jó (portrayed by the very good actor João Jesus). He is a problematic boy from a broken family who hangs out with local delinquents and endures mistreatment from his alcoholic father. Jó writes down his thoughts in a notebook that Rosa finds and starts reading after he gets kicked out of his father’s apartment and starts living on her building’s roof. She realizes that Jó is a talented writer and develops an unusual patronizing and motherly relationship which is soon to be threatened by the already complex relations in her own family. Vasconcelos’ film deals fairly deftly with conventional situations and simple dramatic relations, mostly relying on the two characters and their subtle interrelationship, which rests primarily on the exceptionally exhilarated performance by Maria do Céu Guerre and her interplay with João Jesus. Finally, we will have the opportunity to see the winner of Portuguese film awards The Portuguese Falcon by João Leitão, who directed a short feature comedy about the same hero in 2011, making him the first Portuguese superhero. He developed the same story about the fighter against communism and protector of the president Antonio Salazar and his regime in the 1960’s, using parody and burlesque with an over-exaggerated detachment from trash and relying on absurdity and grotesque. (Josip Grozdanić)