Doclisboa has announced the complete programme for its 20th edition, which runs 6-16 October 2022. Since its first edition, the leading Portuguese docfest has presented more than 3,500 films, including 548 world premieres, and has welcomed an audience of more than half a million spectators. “Over these two decades, the festival not only followed the many changes in the world, but also sought to build a space for reflection and new cinematic perspectives on the surrounding reality,” Doclisboa writes.
“The 20th edition is dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard, a free and thought-provoking mind, committed and attentive filmmaker. We owe him the programme we present today and we celebrate his life in each screening,” organisers add.
The festival will open October 6 with the Portuguese premiere of North Terminal (pictured above) by Lucrecia Martel. The acclaimed filmmaker returns to documentary cinema with a short film made during the pandemic, where she follows the singer Julieta Laso in her various encounters with an extraordinary group of Argentine artists in the Salta region. The opening session will include a musical show, starring Portuguese composer and singer Lula Pena, who will present a sound experience at Cinema São Jorge, in Lisbon.
Doclisboa will close October 15 with Love-Lights by Acácio de Almeida and Marie Carré, described as “a declaration of love to photography and cinema.”
The 2022 programme is composed of 281 films, comprising 47 world premieres and 28 international premieres. The International Competition “travels through 13 different territories. It brings 12 perspectives on the world and on cinema, with a formal and aesthetic diversity that questions the world in its different facets,” writes the festival. The selection features the most recent works by Nikita Lavretski, Alejandro Vázquez San Miguel, Amber Bemak, Camille Degeye, Claudia Müller, Dominique Loreau, Gastón Sahajdacny, Jacques Kébadian, Léo Liotard, Rania Stephan, Shichiri Kei and Vadim Kostrov.
Of the 44 Portuguese films in this year’s edition, 12 will feature the Portuguese Competition, eight of which are world premieres. Ana Vîjdea, César Pedro, Irene M. Borrego, Leonardo Mouramateus, João Rosas, Maria Simões and Tiago Melo Bento, Maxime Martinot, Miguel de Jesus, Mónica de Miranda, Raul Domingues, Rosa Coutinho Cabral and Welket Bungué will “present proposals that challenge our constructions on reality, between spaces, times, memories, and affections.”
Five Portuguese films will have their world premiere at the festival: Catarina Alves Costa portrays Margot Dias (1908-2001), German director and anthropologist, João Pedro Moreira takes us through the creative processes of Portuguese singer and composer Rui Reininho in A Viagem do Rei, Diogo Varela Silva portrays the life and work of João Ayres – An Independent Painter, and Patrick Mendes films the 40th anniversary of Mata-Ratos live at Octógono – Fundão.
Dance, music, literature is the the Heart Beat of Doclisboa’s film offer. Alexandre O. Philippe puts together the relationship between the cinematographic work of David Lynch built on the universe of The Wizard of Oz in Lynch/Oz. In Godard Cinema by Cyril Leuthy, audiences rediscover the master of the Nouvelle Vague and the constant renewal of his art. French filmmaker and actor Mathieu Amalric will be in Lisbon to present his trilogy about jazz musician (and close friend) John Zorn.
In anticipation of the Cinekomix!!! series, directed by Edgar Pêra – which explores the relationship between cinema and comics – the festival presents three episodes about three internationally renowned authors – Neil Gaiman, José Carlos Fernandes and Tommi Musturi.
The festival’s From The Earth to the Moon strand once again presents “a set of attentive and critical perspectives on the world through the lens of history and contemporaneity.” In solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion, Doclisboa presents the restored copy of Olexander Dovzhenko’s Earth.
Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, returns with the portrait of former Lithuanian president Vytautas Landsbergis, in Mr Landsbergis. Alon Schwarz travels through the memories and wounds of the lost Palestinian village of Tantura. The conspiracy theory about the death of John F. Kennedy becomes more and more real with new evidence presented by Oliver Stone in JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. Frederick Wiseman delves into the intimacy of Lev and Sofia Tolstoy’s troubled relationship in Un Couple, and Sébastien Lifshitz pays a moving tribute to the queer community that found refuge in Casa Susanna in the 1960s.
In ‘Artistic Differences: Colectivo Cine Mujer’ – presented in partnership with UnionDocs and Artistic Differences – Doclisboa screens 4 restorations of short films by this Mexican collective from the 70s and 80s, a pioneer in the articulation of an openly feminist cinema.
The New Visions section once again “expands the boundaries of cinema, with a programme that takes risks on new cinematographic languages, questioning different times and territories,” the festival writes. Éric Baudelaire and Ana Carolina are the invited directors of this edition.
Želimir Žilnik’s cinema, the subject of a retrospective in 2017, returns to the festival with the screening of 4 short films that were considered lost. Laurent Achard films Patricia Mazuy in the making of her film Before Saturn Bowling, and Peter von Bagh reveals the fascinating cinema of Finnish Mikko Niskanen, whose Eight Deadly Shots can finally be seen, thanks to von Bagh and Martin Scorsese’s recovery and restoration efforts.
In the thematic programmes, audiences can also find the most recent films by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata (Where Is This Street? or With No Before Nor After); by James Benning (The United States of America); by Ruth Beckermann (Mutzenbacher); Mike Hoolboom (Waves); and by Elisabeth Perceval and Nicolas Klotz (Song of the Buried City), among others.
From October 11 to 16 October, Nebulae, Doclisboa’s networking space, hosts new meetings for industry professionals. In partnership with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the festival will present the first edition of ‘Jumpgate – Inspiring European Producers,’ comprising (what will become) an annual summit aimed at European producers from different areas and different levels of experience in the field of non-fiction film production. Nebulae also welcomes France as its Guest Country in 2022, as well as a new edition of Arché. It will also focus on ‘The Colonial Question Retrospective’ and will debate on ‘Women in Cinema, Women at Work.’ Industry professionals can also meet to discuss methods and tools for creating audiences in ‘State of the Art.’
The festival’s full programme is now available at www.doclisboa.org.
