Doclisboa unveiled September 21 the full programme for its next edition, running from 15 to 25 October. The 24th edition presents 198 films from 51 countries, including 34 world premieres, 13 international premieres, three European premieres and 32 Portuguese films, “spanning generations, geographies and different ways of making and thinking about cinema,” organisers write.
Doclisboa opens with Asphalt Guerrilla, by Edgar Pêra, which takes Manuel Ricardo Sousa’s book of the same name as its starting point, bringing together the accounts of a former FP-25 operative with the filmmaker’s own memories of the turbulent 1980s, through archive material, fiction and artificial intelligence.
Closing the festival, Alain Cavalier, at the age of 95, presents Thanks for Coming, a new and final chapter in his cinematic diary, in which everyday gestures and encounters become the stuff of cinema.
This year’s International Competition comprises 11 films, including seven world premieres, three international premieres and one European premiere. The Portuguese Competition also features 11 films, all of them world premieres. The International Competition includes films by filmmakers already familiar to festival audiences, amongst them João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, alongside others whose work is being presented in Portugal for the first time, in a selection marked by remarkable sophistication, aesthetic diversity and political acuity. The Portuguese Competition, features new works by Inês Oliveira, Ico Costa, Pedro Neves and Manuel Mozos, alongside filmmakers presenting their films at Doclisboa for the first time. Scroll down for full selections.
The New Visions once again “explores the possibilities of cinema as an art form intimately connected to the experience of the present, bringing together films that move across different times, memories and histories through open and experimental forms,” the festival writes. In From the Earth to the Moon, cinema, history and politics “converge in films that question images and what they reveal about past and present.” In Heart Beat, music, artistic creation and memory move across different times and geographies. Click here and scroll to read full details of these sections. https://doclisboa.org
The competitive Green Years section, dedicated to discovering emerging talent and first experiences in filmmaking, once again occupies a “special place” in the Doclisboa programme. This year, the competition brings together 11 films, seven of them world premieres, making space for new voices, languages and ways of thinking about cinema.
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
- The Measured Everlasting Is 1.334 Billion Years by Thunska Pansittivorakul. Thailand, Tailândia, Hong Kong, China. 98 mins. World premiere
- About Space and Depth by Paula Gaitán. Brazil. 138 mins. World premiere
- Saturn or a Brief Treatise on Melancholy by Mariano Donoso Makowski. Argentina. 112 mins. World premiere
- Geography Is Destiny by Rayna Teneva. Germany, Bulgaria, Austria. 69 mins. International premiere
- Memoirs of a Badger by Isabelle Prim. France. 94 mins. International premiere.
- Memórias de Uma Viagem pelo Alto Rio Negro by Kasia Mich, Dani Correia, Brazil. 2026. 71 mins. World premiere
- For the Moon by Éric Baudelaire. France. 88 mins. European premiere.
- Smarty by Nikita Lavretski, Sergey Kolosovski. Lithuania. 88 mins. World premiere
- The Centaur by Jacques Meilleurat. France. 65 mins. International premiere
- Don’t Touch Me by Ghassan Salhab. Lebanon. Líbano. 72 mins. World premiere
- 13 Pins by João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata. Portugal. 61 mins. World premiere
PORTUGUESE COMPETITION
- Povo e Poder / People and Power by Ico Costa. Portugal, France, Mozambique. 190 mins. World premiere
- Os Continuadores da Revolução by Pedro Neves. Portugal, Mozambique, France. 91 mins. World premiere
- The Morning Wind / Vent du matin by Cláudia Ribeiro. Portugal. 2026. 82 mins. World premiere
- Visits from a Distant Relative by Inês Oliveira. Portugal. 62 mins. World premiere
- A Voz de Todos / Everyone’s Voice – Jornal do Fundão by Manuel Mozos. Portugal. 81 mins. World premiere
- Hipogeus / Hypogea by Raul Domingues. Portugal. 39 mins. World premiere
- The house is the ruin of a house by Inês Sapeta Dias. Portugal. 31 mins. World premiere
- Tired Horse Soup by Maria Novo. Portugal. 16 mins. World premiere
- Golden Hour by André Santos Martins. Japan, Germany, Portugal. 66 mins. World premiere
- The Continuation by Maxime Martinot. France, Portugal. 30 mins. World premiere
- Mysticisme du Sud by Fábio Penela. Portugal. 34 mins. World premiere
GREEN YEARS COMPETITION
- Ponto de Fuga / Vanishing Point by Rita Torres. Portugal. 5 mins. World premiere
- I Fear My Father More than N*tanyahu by Kay Ayach. Portugal, Hungary, Belgium, Lebanon. 18 mins. World premiere
- A Pulga by Francisco João, Vasco Morais. Portugal. 27 mins. World premiere
- a sea, a sea, a sea, a sea / more, more, more, more by Dasha Likhaia. Austria, Russia. 2026. 48 mins. International premiere
- Outras Manhãs Distantes / Other Distant Mornings by João Coroa Justino. Portugal. 25 mins. World premiere
- Frozen Lands / Les Terres gelées by Thomas Schira, Takeiki Flon. Belgium. 29 mins. International premiere
- Yilma by Elena Berelowitsch by Cuba, Italy. 10 mins. World premiere
- Square of the Unseen / Platia Aoraton by Theodore Selekos. Greece. 30 mins. International premiere
- A Fossa / The Trench by Manuel Ferreira. Portugal. 39 mins World premiere
- Calandra by Chloe Cazorla, Lucas Lagrange, Laura Raniela, Jaime Aurata. Spain. 24 mins. World premiere
- Catacombs / Saradeeb by Shehab Fatoum. Germany. 29 mins. International premiere
