The film tells the story of a mother and a son from the interior of Portugal that run away to Lisbon to avoid being separated by the state institutions that want to take the child away from the mother.

Released in 2003, The Policewoman was shot while Sapinho was in the editing process of his feature documentary Bosnia Diaries, which was filmed a couple of years earlier in Bosnia during the Yugoslav Wars.

The darkness, realism and harshness of The Policewoman clearly echoes the Bosnian War experienced by Sapinho.

That experience of war would cause a great change to his vision of the world, leading him, when shooting The Policewoman, to discover in Portugal things he thought had only happened in Bosnia in consequence of the war.

It made him realize that, after all, they were also happening in his native town in consequence of the economic transformations imposed by capitalism via the European Union.