Film narratives about crisis and austerity in Portugal: Context, production and distribution conditions

Documentary films have emerged as potent tools for shaping public discourse and influencing societal and political agendas. Despite the growing acknowledgement garnered by Portuguese cinema at international festivals, its impact on public debate still needs to be explored. This article undertakes a comprehensive examination of how the financial crisis and austerity measures have been portrayed in Portuguese documentary production from 2010 to 2020. The analysis corpus includes 169 feature-length documentary synopses. We conducted a content analysis of films whose synopses explicitly mentioned crisis or austerity and addressed issues such as poverty, unemployment, the elderly, loneliness, territorial asymmetries and migrations. The narrative, visual choices, sound, time and space portrayed and the approach to the crisis were aspects considered in the analysis of the films. The findings reveal a limited emphasis on the portrayal of the crisis, which is seen from different perspectives, times and spaces as if permeating the national daily life. Defective distribution mechanisms also limit the ability of films to impact public debate.