“Contado por Mulheres” (“Told by Women”), an initiative led by the Portuguese public broadcaster RTP and the Lisbon-based production company Ukbar Filmes, featured 10 primetime movies told by female first-time filmmakers in its first season. For its second edition, it is expanding to 20 projects. “20 women first-time directors/20 TV movies for primetime/20 stories told by women,” highlighted a summary of the second edition of the initiative shown during a Wednesday breakfast event at the Conecta Fiction & Entertainment industry gathering in Cuenca, Spain.

Ukbar’s Pandora da Cunha Telles (Once Upon a Time in Gaza), creator of the initiative, and José Fragoso, director of programs at RTP, presented their plans for the second season during the event, with the latter emphasizing the goal of “nurturing the next generation of Portuguese filmmakers.”

With a focus on sustainability and a collective community experience, all films will be shot back-to-back in blocks of five in small cities in Portugal, with each project getting two weeks, starting in the fall. The director chooses the cinematographer and select other roles, but most crew will be shared across all films. The stories will be written by screenwriters and be “stories of today arising around Portugal,” said Cunha Telles.

The films don’t need to feature female protagonists or tell female-centric stories. “The idea is to focus on any stories told by female directors,” she said. The 20 stories have one thing in common, according to her: “At the end of the tunnel, there is hope.”

Among the stories she mentioned are one about “a professor sleeping in his van,” another about a person “awakening from a coma after the transition to the digital world,” and one about fishermen losing their boats and starting to write philosophical papers.

A key pillar of the initiative is one-on-one mentorship by “international mentors, including Gudny Hummelvoll (Norway), Mariela Besuievsky (Spain), and Francesco Virga (Italy),” the companies said. The Portuguese system of cash rebates will also be tapped.

Each movie will be 45-52 minutes in length and cover such genres as comedies and thrillers. “It can’t be confused with a first feature, which is not the idea,” Cunha Telles explained about the length of the projects. “But it is a passport” to potentially move on to other work.

In fact, four filmmakers from the first season return for the second outing, and several others have moved on to other directing work, showing the success of the initiative, she said. The other directors of the second round include actresses, a theater director, and an editor, among others.

The most recognizable name on the list is actress Lúcia Moniz, who is known to a golbal audience for playing a Portuguese maid in Love, Actually.

Several stories have international elements, such as one about illegal immigration, meaning “there is a possibility for co-productions in several of these TV movies,” Cunha Telles shared at Conecta.

Other potential international moves are already on her mind. In the next step, she said her plan is to either bring the franchise to other countries where female filmmakers aren’t very present yet, such as Greece, or open the initiative up to feature a film each from various European countries.

Here is the full list of the female directors for the second edition of “Told by Women”: Lúcia Moniz, Ana Cunha, Cristina Carvalhal, Joana Areal, Rita Pestana, Margarida Vila-Nova, Joana Machado Madeira,
Margarida Leitão, Rita Barbosa, Joana Botelho, Maria João Bastos, Fabiana Tavares, Mónica Santos, Joana Barbosa, Laura Andrade, Cláudia Alves, Filipa Ruiz, Sandra Faleiro, Carolina Rosendo, and Francisca Alarcão.