International Competition
The international section will show a selection of some of the best documentaries from around the world, produced last season (2008-09). Some have already won awards and received critical acclaim, for others this will be their first screening.
There are three categories:

Investigations
The competitive section Investigations congregates films that seek to meet the critical situations of present and past. By revealing something new, by position themselves before the fact, these films can interfere with the reality or enrich our view of history.

National Competition
A competitive selection showing some of the best Portuguese produced and/or directed documentaries completed during the last year. Most of these will be world premiers.

Jonas Mekas Retrospective
Retrospective screening and master class
The guest of honour at doclisboa 2009 is Jonas Mekas, a living legend of North American independent cinema and the arts in general. His presence in Lisbon is co-sponsored and organised by the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, in a joint tribute to him. At the age of 87, Jonas Mekas is still producing seminal works in completely distinct areas. In 2009 he completed a documentary about the director Martin Scorsese and an inspirational autobiographyalmost seven hours long («Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR»), which premiered in January at the Rotterdam festival. His work is regularly shown in principal museums and film institutes around the world and he continues to film the lives of his friends on a daily basis (just as he always has). His vitality and dedication serve as a shining example to successive generations of filmmakers and other artists. Jonas Mekas will give a Master class at Culturgest based on excerpts from his films and will engage in debate with the audience after the screening of his films.

Love Stories
Great love stories have always made cinema history, especially in the area of fiction.  This special doclisboa program is designed to reveal exceptional love stories recorded in the field of documentary.

The Balkans in Focus
Retrospective on the post Yugoslav documentary (1991- )
Commissary: Jurij Meden
The part of the world whose cinematography we delve into this year is particularly explosive. Yugoslavia, which up until 1992 was a single country, is now divided into 7 independent states: Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia. Showing The Balkans in Focus aims to bring the extraordinary cinematography of that region (whose documentary schools and traditions were exceptional throughout the twentieth century) to wider attention and to help us reach a better understanding of what happened and what is still happening in an area populated by warring peoples and religions, despite the fact they have so much in common. How do those taking part view these fraternal wars? What survives and what is unaffected by the wars? What is day-to-day existence like??

Risks       
Film selection: Augusto M. Seabra
The aim of this parallel section to the festival is to showcase daring, innovative work that is situated on the border between fiction and documentary.

Heart Beat
This parallel section will present documentaries in which music is a fundamental element. This year there is Heart Beat «vintage», where forgotten masterpieces are rediscovered, or screened for the first time in cinemas. There will also be space for more recent work and some tributes.

Foot doc
Football, this highly popular king of sport is very often a central theme in films. This section brings together a small section of influential, recent work on the subject.