Portugal, the 1970s. As the end of an era of repression approaches, a bourgeois family still in its bubble of power spends its vacation in a country house. The teenage cousins spend their days in indolence, interrupted by fits of hysteria. It will only take an introduction of an outside element – in the shape of a young man – for violence to erupt.

Director David Pinheiro Vicente states that the idea of the film came from witnessing family gatherings and trying to guess the secrets, fantasies and unspoken things beyond the conversations. Part Pasolinian and sexy hide-and-seek, part political allegory (the young intruder embodies the post-Portuguese-dictatorship freedom to come), The Hunters is another solid, delightful addition to Vicente’s noteworthy work, which addresses the tension between body and spirit – his previous short films competed for the Golden Bear at Berlinale and the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival.