A singsong children’s game forms the basis for Oliveira’s first feature, a sly parable of adolescence and acquiescence under dictatorship that led to the director being blacklisted by Portugal’s repressive government. Two young boys, the shy Carlitos and the brash bully Eduardinho, compete for the attentions of Teresinha, a contest that soon blossoms into rebellion and promises a certain escape from their well-patrolled lives. Oliveira films the world of these pint-sized protagonists with an unsentimentally direct hand, treating their naive games of cops and robbers (referred to in the film’s title) as mere trial runs for the decision all adults must make, that between authority and resistance. With its nonprofessional cast, natural lighting, and street-level direct shooting (in Oliveira’s beloved Porto), Aniki-Bóbó has been called the first neorealist film, having been made several years before the movement’s presumed debut, Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945).

• Written by Oliveira, based on a story by João Rodrigues de Freitas. Photographed by António Mendes. With Vital dos Santos, António Palma, Armando Pedro, António Morais Soares. (70 mins)

Preceded by short:
The Hunt (A caça) (Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, 1963). Two boys join a bizarre hunting party with tragic results in Oliveira’s dark, visionary parable, shown with both Oliveira’s original ending and a version appended later. (20 mins)

• (Total running time: 90 mins, In Portuguese with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Cinemateca Portuguesa)