DOCUSERIES
4x30'

by Rita Nunes

Over the last years, more than 15 thousand immigrants from Southeast Asia, almost all of them men, have settled in São Teotónio – a small Portuguese parish of, until then, only 6 thousand inhabitants. And still they keep arriving, day after day, to work picking berries inside greenhouses that now proliferate within a natural park.

Greenhouse Effect is a documentary series about the consequences of this phenomenon.

And it’s, at the same time, a reflection on the great issues of our contemporary world, such as globalization, migrations, political conflicts, scarcity of water and a future that seems as uncertain as ever.

Greenhouse Effect

26:15

EP 1 - Greenhouse Effect.mp4

27:53

Ep. 2, Red gold

Multinational corporations are the main beneficiaries of the absence of strict regulations and lack of proper governmental oversight. Shocking conditions of workers living inside the farms and the proliferation of greenhouses made of plastic are consequences of a system ruled by companies that are not even based in the country.

28:40

Ep. 3, Who’s in charge here

A structural conflict between an irrigation perimeter, built in 1960s, and a natural park, demarcated in 1990s on top of the same area, reveal the unclear purpose of what’s expected from that place: nature conservation or intensive agriculture?

30:33

Ep. 4, Waiting for the rain

Water is the key element that connects all the complex systems shown in the previous episodes. And as the reservoir levels go down year after year, locals, farmers, ministers and organization leaders speak up about the dramatic situation in the midst of climate change discussions around the world.

Rita Nunes: In 1996 she graduated from Lisbon's Theatre and Film School, an academic learning that would lead her to work with different languages and formats over the years. In 1997 she directed the short-film Minus Nine, thus confirming her desire to work in the field of cinema and media. It is one of the most awarded Portuguese short films, it was released in a dozen of theaters, won several national and international awards and it was aired on television in several countries. Since the start she's been using short-films, documentaries, and videos (in many different fields – music, fashion, corporate responsibility) to develop her own style and achieve a balance between technique and her gaze's instinct. For two decades she devoted to directing advertising films - she'd only been in the field for a year, and hers was one of the two Portuguese films included in Cannes 99 shortlist. After that, she saw many of her advertising films awarded. She directed the television fiction series The King's Favourite (Madre Paula), winner of the Best Series Award – Sophia 2018 Award, and the TV movies As Contas do Morto and Just by Chance, winner of the Prix Europa award in 2004. In 2019, her feature Crooked Lines, a film about love in the age of digital communication, now available on HBO Max in Portugal and released on DVD in November 2020, opened in Portuguese theaters. In January 2023, the film won the 7th ArteKino Festival's European Audience Award, by Internet users from 32 countries. She directed, in 2021, the TV Movie Na Porta ao Lado – Amor and in 2022 this docuseries Greenhouse Effect (Efeito Estufa), both available at OPTO.