DocLisboa is the only film festival in Portugal that is exclusively dedicated to documentary films. In 2005, during the third edition of the festival, DocLisboa took advantage of a renewed interest in documentary films on the part of Portuguese audiences and managed to attract numerous and enthusiastic viewers to the halls of Culturgest. DocLisboa was the film festival that had the largest audiences in Lisbon in 2005 (with 18,500 tickets sold). Documentaries were “the talk of the town” and a new awareness was created about the genre’s enormous richness, diversity and potential.

In 2006, the festival aims to continue the main objectives of previous editions:

• To show Portuguese audiences important, award-winning international films which have not yet been screened in Lisbon;
• To allow a more profound reflection upon contemporary and current themes;
• To acquaint audiences with cinematic works from other countries in a more systematic manner;
• To organise debates that mobilise the public around important films and common themes present in diverse works.

DocLisboa 2006 will once again bring the best national and international documentary films to Lisbon: ten days of intensive screenings, with more films, sections and complementary activities than ever before.

The festival’s competitive programming includes an International Competition and a National Competition (both for shorts and feature films), as well as a section entitled Investigations, consisting of documentary films about current-day issues, which was created for the first time in DocLisboa 2005. The sections centred around reflections and debates in this year’s festival focus on Contemporary Japanese Documentaries and include a programme on Nice Work, which has been a major theme throughout the history of documentary films and has acquired a new relevance in recent years. There is also a new section entitled Real Fiction, which attempts to (re)establish bridges between two banks of the same river, cinema, via a set of films chosen by the renowned Portuguese director Pedro Costa. A retrospective dedicated to the work of a single filmmaker brings the Israeli director Amos Gitai to Lisbon. He will be present at the festival to present his so called “Wadi” and “House” trilogies and will interact with audiences. Various special sessions of films by consecrated names from the world of documentaries (Pirjo Honkasalo, Chantal Akerman, Vincent Dieutre, Eduardo Coutinho) that are being screened for the first time in Portugal complete the programme for DocLisboa 2006.

In addition to the specific section dedicated to Portuguese documentaries, this year they also have a significant presence in several other categories at DocLisboa. The festival’s complementary activities include various debates and conferences about the films being screened and the themes presented therein, as well as a masterclass with the Japanese director and cinema historian, Makoto Satô.

In October, DocLisboa will thus once again be a privileged meeting point for Portuguese audiences and directors and other professionals from the world of documentaries both from Portugal and abroad (producers, distributors, programmers, critics...), while simultaneously being an open forum for reflection and discussions about the state of the world and the state of contemporary documentary cinema.