official, government issued alms box. It was screened in competition at the 1994 Tokyo International Film Festival. In 1995 Oliveira's reputation had grown and his films were internationally acclaimed. That year he made his first of many films starring international movie stars: The Convent (O Convento), starring John Malkovich and Catherine Deneuve. The film is based on the novel As Terras Do Risco by Agustina Bessa-Luís and examines the Faustian theme of good versus evil. In the film Malkovich plays an American writer who travels to Portugal with his wife (Deneuve) to research his theory that William Shakespeare was really Jacques Perez, a Jewish Spaniard who fled his native country to avoid the Spanish Inquisition. The couple stay in a monastery with strange, demonic- looking staff and they eventually end up having affairs with two staff members. The film was screened in competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and won the Prize of the Catalan Screenwriter's Critic and Writer's Association at the 1995 Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival. In 1996 Oliveira worked with French star Michel Piccoli and Greek film star Irene Papas in Party. The film was co-written by Oliveira and Agustina Bessa-Luís from an original idea by Oliveira. In the film, a married couple played by Leonor Silveira and Rogério Samora have a dinner party that includes a famous Greek actress (Papas) and her lover (Piccoli) and the film consists of conversations between these four characters at parties over the course of five years. The film was screened in competition at the 1996 Venice Film Festival and won Oliveira the award for Best Director at the 1996 Portuguese Golden Globe Awards. In 1997 Oliveira made Voyage to the Beginning of the World (Viagem ao Princípio do Mundo), which was the final film of Italian film star Marcello Mastroianni. In the film Mastroianni plays an aging film director named Manoel who travels on a road trip across Northern Portugal with French film actor Afonso (Jean-Yves Gautier) and two other young companions, Judite (Leonor Silveira) and Duarte (Diogo Dória). Afonso wants to see the Portuguese village that his father grew up in and see the relatives that he has never met. On the way, Manoel stops at several locations on the road that he remembers from his childhood, only to find them much different than he had remembered. The film is autobiographical in that the locations on the