On the evening of 24 April 1974, a young conscript, Daniel, shares a last kiss with his girlfriend Rosa before boarding a train from Lisbon back to his army base in Santarém, both fearing a deployment to Portugal’s colonial war. The mood is heavy, fearful and uncertain, as Rosa then travels by tram to Antónia’s flat to look after her daughter Amelia while Antónia, a left-leaning journalist and lecturer, wrestles with the moral weight of the regime’s crimes.
Back at the base, Daniel remains oblivious to the coup unfolding around him. Captain Salgueiro Maia arrests the base commander at gunpoint and calls the soldiers to assemble for a midnight march toward Lisbon, urging them to join him in overthrowing the government. Maia’s erudite yet cautious ally, Major Gervásio, refuses to participate, as does Lieutenant Lobão, highlighting the split within the armed forces at the outset of the crisis.
Meanwhile, in Lisbon, Antónia confronts her estranged husband Manuel, a Portuguese Army captain, over atrocities from the colonial wars. Rosa arrives to babysit and Antónia heads to a reception where she pleads with her brother Filipe Correia, a government minister, to release a student detained by the DGS, but he refuses. The head of the DGS, Salieri, is also at the reception; he recognises Antónia and later assaults her in a toilet. Antónia returns home in despair, unaware that Manuel has his own coup plotting under way. Manuel and his colleagues plan to seize the Rádio Clube Português, intending to use it to broadcast communiqués from the Armed Forces Movement.
As the plot strands tighten, Maia and his troops prepare to move toward Lisbon, and the other conspirators position themselves for action. The signal to start the coup is the broadcast of Grândola, Vila Morena just after midnight on the 25th. Maia’s column advances, though a breakdown halts one of the key armoured vehicles; at that moment, Major Gervásio arrives in a conspicuous red sports car and joins the rebels. The column reaches the Praça do Comércio, facing the threat of a warship and a tank column commanded by Brigadier Pais, who remains loyal to the regime. After a tense stand-off, many of Pais’s troops defect to Maia’s side, allowing the rebels to gain leverage inside the city.
Entering the government offices in the Praça do Comércio, Maia discovers the ministers have fled to the Republican National Guard headquarters at Carmo. In a series of dramatic vignettes, we revisit the fates of the opening-night lovers: the young conscript and Rosa again, their moment of tenderness marked by a carnation placed in the barrel of his rifle, later found inside a military armoured car during a moment of intimacy. At the GNR barracks, a final stand-off erupts as DGS officers shoot from windows, killing four people—the only fatalities of the Carnation Revolution—while Virgílio, a man who earlier tangled with Manuel and his group, is among the casualties.
Maia ultimately orders his troops to fire on the building if necessary and threatens to shell it, pushing the crisis toward a resolution. Just before Maia’s deadline expires, emissaries from General António de Spínola arrive to negotiate the regime’s surrender. Spínola himself arrives, places Gervásio in local command, and orders Maia to transfer the arrested Caetano, Correia, and the other leaders to an air-base and then exile in Brazil.
The film closes with the release of political prisoners, including Antónia’s lover Emílio, and a nuanced look at Manuel and Maia’s fates as they narrowly escape being mistaken for DGS/PIDE officers rather than soldiers. In the aftermath, Antónia and Emílio pursue political careers—she leaning left, he moving toward the centre-right; after two years, they part ways. Manuel’s life darkens into alcoholism, and Maia dies of cancer in his forties, yet the revolution succeeds in toppling the Estado Novo regime and inaugurating democracy and the rule of law in Portugal.
