Doclisboa dedicates its 2018 auteur retrospective to Colombian filmmaker Luis Ospina. His accurate and humorous vision of his country, his strong passion for cinema and his commitment to the preservation of the past make him one of the most important figures in Latin America’s recent film history. Luis Ospina is born in Cali, Colombia. He […]

An essay on the relation between cultural worker and institution. Reediting a good deal of the works by Terrorismo de Autor, this film was specifically produced for a show at a centre for contemporary culture. A gesture of rage, confrontation and ironic tenderness.

James Benning’s first feature film includes many of the author’s future main aesthetical and formal concerns. A sequence of seemingly separate tableaux, but where a series of recurring elements—a figure, a body a colour—generate echoes that upset memory.

Quite and mysterious, Xin Seha is an emerging indie musician in South Korea. While his band gradually gets attention from the public, Xin goes through an ordeal: his mother is sick. Xin, however, bravely looks at his pain and expresses his feeling through his voice. 12 HAGO 24 portrays Xin Seha and his surrounding people, […]

Cinemax Cinemas in Braga (northern Portugal) will host a Doclisboa extention, between the 23rd and the 25th of November, presented by our delightful programmer Joana Sousa. Fifteen films from the 15th edition of the festival, including two DocSchools sessions, promoted by our very own Education Project. You can almost say it’s a mini festival.   23 November […]

A relation between man and machine that preserves the moving images. Artefacts and frames revealing who we were, how we thought and what we felt. A delicate, passionate work at the National Archive of the Moving Images (ANIM).

“Three scenes featuring horses, remembering Jacinto. The first is a daytime forest haunting that winds up at a carousel; the second a rainy street in Portugal; the finale a night-time vigil of fire and water.” Mike Hoolboom

The starting point for this film is Manuel Botelho’s lecture delivered at the international congress on tomb sculpture that took place on November 2017, in Lisbon, at the National Museum of Ancient Art. By placing into dialogue text and images, the author addresses a recent project of his, turning sculptural works from a distant past […]

The third chapter of the trilogy is a kind of study on Baathist socialisation in school and on the intermeshing of patriarchal power and dictatorial power. The enthusiasm for the project faces desolation and destruction. The film is a bitter and sarcastic settling of accounts with the omnipresent Baath Party, which led the entire country […]

The first segment of the film L’amore, Una voce umana draws inspiration from the theatre play La Voix humaine, by Jean Cocteau, and shows a telephone call by a woman who was left by her lover.

As we arrive in Invisible Island, we meet Dádá, the musician. He’s trying to create the Lunar melody, which is the only one able to attract the celestial bodies, by moving them from their impassive positions, and to unleash the reverse of the eclipse to summon eternal love.

Based on the memories of CUF’s factory workers at Alferrarede, the film builds another time and space, which are gone, confronting past and present, and rescuing the stories worth being told from oblivion in the voices of those who experienced them.

In mid November, the dead ones appeared floating on the Strait of Magellan tied together to life vests, cellular phones, computers and passports. Two of them were found malnourished, another with scurvy and typhus and Yin Xinji’s body was never found. In June, Carmen’s cousin told her that on the lighthouse close to his ranch, […]

Collage putting together snippets of found footage taken from B-movies, newsreels, soft-core pornography, novelty short films, and other sources, to a musical score featuring Respighi’s Pines of Rome.

The life of Pedro Manrique Figueroa, a pioneer of collage in Colombia, is like an adventure novel that is both incomplete and contradictory. Taking his life and work as a pretext, this mockumentary takes the viewer on a journey through history from the year 1934 up until 1981, when the artist mysteriously disappeared from view. […]

The portrait of a father as seen through the eyes of his daughter by means of a photo album. A travel diary from the 1970s, starting in Japan and around the world. Father and daughter cross views on the memories of the old images and words, sharing the will to bring them to the present […]

Like in 2017, this year Doclisboa will be using Visitor Page as a new online interface to communicate with the festival’s guests. It is also through our Visitor Page that you can apply for a Festival Accreditation.   Please access our Visitor Page by clicking on the link below. It is there, after creating a new account, where you can submit […]

Acto de fé (1970) adapts Jean-Paul Sartre’s short story Erostratus about a man on the verge of despair who decides to buy a gun and go out to kill at random. Shot in Los Angeles, this was Ospina’s first project at the UCLA Film School. Acto de fe (Redux) was restored from the original Kodak […]

“The motto for this film is affections from life in images. It alternates between ‘snapshots’ of shootings and the present-day memory of people with whom I’ve worked in films by Teresa Villaverde, João Mário Grilo, José Álvaro de Morais, Fernando Lopes or Miguel Gomes.” – Jorge Cramez

Based on dreams (waking and non-waking) by pals and acquaintances of noted American writer Lucy Corin, the night after the epochal US election of 2016. A bevy of speakers weigh in on the new world.

Three months after a forest fire destroyed their home, João and Kiat still struggle as they try to bring order back into their lives. The film explores the fragility of humankind against the mightiness and unpredictability of nature.

Celebrating the lives of Fats Waller, Jackson Pollock, Janieta Eyre and Frida Kahlo, a quartet of hauntologies reframes the cruel reductions of biography to focus on death and doubles. Repurposing archival texts (the diaries of Kahlo, the testimonies of Waller’s kin and family) as audio-visual graffiti, old voices are cropped and replayed as intertitles or […]

After the crisis came tourism and Lisbon’s transformation. Alis Ubbo (Phoenician for “safe port”) ironically follows the change in the urban landscape of the city in the last two years.

In August 1919, John Harbord is sent by President Woodrow Wilson to the Middle East to investigate the feasibility of the Balfour Declaration. He is also to report on Turkish-Armenian relations in the wake of the Armenian Genocide. “The footage is a remarkable record of an area wrecked by war (…). In the end, Congress […]

Using the unfinished film, Angelita y Miguel Ángel, by Andrés Caicedo and Carlos Mayolo, as a structuring device, friends of prolific film critic and writer Andrés Caicedo, an unforgettable figure of the group of Cali in the 1970s who left an incredible amount of texts, reflect upon his life, his work and his suicide at […]

Travelogue that was part of a series shot by Giovanni Vitrotti, first director of photography at the Società Anonima Ambrosio based in Torino, the film portrays with impressive images the ruins of the legendary ancient capital of the Kingdom of Armenia, Ani, abandoned in the 18th century.

Using video assist recorded images, Antecâmara is about the “act” of shooting, the physical reality and ritual energy of two film crews during the preparation for a shot. The first video assist rule is that the image one sees in it has to be more interesting than what one sees outside. Nothing is left to […]

In the biggest public university in Latin America a group of theatre students and their teacher are rehearsing Antigone, a Greek tragedy that addresses the conflict between the rules of power and the will of a young woman to do the right thing. Life, theatre and fiction are interwoven in classrooms, in their homes, in […]

The film rescues from oblivion the tragic memory of Antonio María Valencia (1902 – 1952), pioneer of Cali’s musical and artistic culture. A moving and well documented portrait of the Colombian pianist and composer, who gave up his brilliant career in Paris in order to intervene in the cultural desert that was Cali, from the […]

A journey through journeys. A tribute to one’s parents. A self-portrait.

Arché is a laboratory of professional activities aiming directors, producers and other film professionals. It intends to provide tools to the creation of new film projects, as well as to provide moments of reflection for its creation and formation. Arché is born out of the need and responsibility Doclisboa has been experiencing in terms of […]

In 2018, we are back to Porto with a workshop tutored by Luciano Rigolini, in partnership with Porto/Post/Doc festival, aiming at decentralising Arché at different times and in several territories. We wish for all our participants to experience Arché as a place of possibilities, a space where their films may come to be. But also […]

Armenia, the land where Euphrates rises, Garden of Eden, but also the stage for one of last century’s most violent genocides. These four minutes of film were shot in Turkey soon after the end of the killing. The film was digitally restored in 2015 by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory based […]

Using photos, engravings, drawings and letters, Kébadian creates an imaginary family album of an Armenian child on the eve of the genocide of 1915.

Lisbon is changing. While afro-descendants claim their right to the city there is also growing debate about the public monuments and symbols of Portugal’s colonial past. In the fall of 2017 a confrontation took place between a peaceful protest and neo-Nazi groups in front of a recently inaugurated statue in memory of the sixteenth century […]

In a reduced space of three blocks off Sixth Avenue in Cali, the camera records the opinions of hippie and punk artisans and of a woman selling their art crafts in the streets.

The revenge of a housemaid against her masters. A joyful and impertinent short film, written and directed with Carlos Mayolo.

A film about bootblacks in the streets of Cali. A pure piece of direct cinema in the first instalment of the crafts trilogy.

Hairdressers in Cali discuss life, work, dreams, beauty, fashion and homosexuality. The filmmaker is having a haircut too. Second instalment of the crafts trilogy.

The taxi drivers of Cali, both those working the day shift and the night shift, talk about work, customers and violence, revealing their vision of the city, real or fantasised. Third instalment of the crafts trilogy.

An extra narrative track for blind and partially sighted persons in general, who consume visual media, including television, cinema, theatre, dance, opera and visual arts. It comprises a narrator who talks during the presentation, describing what is going on (and that cannot be perceived through hearing) during the audio natural pauses, and during dialogue whenever […]

Aurora is a young artist from a small village in the North of Portugal. She’s been in love with fashion and dance from a very young age. She lives in Lisbon, where she fights to succeed in performance art and to break preconceptions through her creations.

“This is the heart of the Earth. We’re fighting for the heart of the Earth, this territory. We’re not only fighting for this place; we’re fighting for all territories belonging to the heart of the Earth. That’s where we belong. We, the Avá, are the descendants of the heart of the Earth.” Supplicant Valdomiro Flores, […]

Avenida Almirante Reis em 3 Andamentos documents this major artery in the city of Lisbon. We map it throughout the 20th century focussing on the memory of the area it covers and on the experiences that took and take place in it. Almirante Reis Avenue could work as a time machine. We run it up […]

International Competition Jury: Agnès Godard, Leo Goldsmith, Mariana Gaivão, Mike Hoolboom, Yael Bartana City of Lisbon Award for best international competition film GREETINGS FROM FREE FORESTS, Ian Soroka Portuguese Authors Society International Competition Jury Award THE GUEST, Sebastian Weber Portuguese Competition Jury: Madeleine Molyneaux, Rui Catalão, Virginia Garcia del Pino Award for best Portuguese competition film TERRA, […]

This year, there are no excuses to miss the award-winning films of Doclisboa’18. Showing at Cinema Ideal the 29, 30 and 31 October, at 6:00pm and 10.15pm.  29 OCT 6:00pm INATEL + REVELATION AWARDS Vacas e Rainhas, Laura Marques Cidade Marconi, Ricardo Moreira 29 OCT 10:15pm SCHOOL AWARD BY ETIC Terra Franca, Leonor Teles 30 OCT […]

Joan Jett has been called the Godmother of Punk, a fitting name for the kick-ass frontwoman of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. With archival footage and candid interviews from Joan and others, including Iggy Pop, Blondie and long-time collaborator and songwriting partner Kenny Laguna, Bad Reputation details Jett’s uncompromising life as a musical legend and […]

Featuring a unique collection of archival images, home movies and family photographs from Iraq, Baghdad Twist pulls back the curtain on Iraq’s once thriving Jewish community. Baghdad-born filmmaker Joe Balass takes us on a journey through the fragmented memories of an Arab exile. “When I came across the home movies, that was a whole other […]

Karen is a Muslim independent young woman who advocates for Sharia in the Island of Mozambique but is filled with doubts and contradictions about her identity and the multicultural community in which she lives in a place of historical confluence of cultures.

The film explores the vision behind the iconic American jazz record label. Since 1939, Blue Note has embraced artists such as Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Horace Silver and Miles Davis. Through current recording sessions, rare archive and conversations with Blue Note artists, the film reveals an intimate perspective of a legacy […]

Young Golondrina is found dead in a cheap hotel in Bogota. Former policeman Emerson is hired to investigate the crime. He finds out that four men played an important role in her life: Martillo, a boxer who lost his last fight, bullfighter José Luis, corrupt politician Medardo and blind lottery-ticket seller Mago. A Colombian film […]

Jean-Claude Brisseau receives a film crew and some friends at his home to talk about cinema, childhood, time passing by… Part of the series Cinéma de notre temps, this film is dedicated to André S. Labarthe.

Bruk Out! looks deep inside the raw, energetic world of Jamaican Dancehall culture through the eyes of the powerful women at its heart – Dancehall Queens. Six resilient dancers converge at the biggest Dancehall Queen competition in the world, baring their skin and their souls to dispel myths about this hyper-sexual dance, explaining why it […]

Aïda Kédabian’s paintings tell stories. This video editing tells some of them, between uprooting and wandering.

“In C’est presque au bout du monde, I explore a mystery that fascinates me: where do these inhuman voices come from? Where in the body is the source of this unsettling anomaly of singing?” Mathieu Amalric

Satirical film about the Carnival of Cali.

The history of the city of Cali in ten chapters: the history of the city; the industrial revolution and the changes to the city; what it means to be from Cali; the importance of music; writers and poets from Cali; photographers and painters; artists and cultural life; cinema in Cali; newspapers, radios and television; sports […]

A reflexion on the relation between actor and theatre director, going through the several stages of the performance Ensaio para Uma Cartografia, by Monica Calle.

I find myself in the middle of a Portuguese forest. A set of abandoned objects related to fairgrounds make me think of a schoolmate who wanted to be a ballet dancer. Bumper cars and a rabbit I found in the forest spark memories of going to the fairs. Then I set myself out to collect […]

A Casual Session is a film, theatre, dance or music session that takes place in a more relaxed and welcoming environment, and with more tolerance regarding movement and noise from the audience. It is aimed at all individuals and families favouring a low anxiety environment, families with small children, people with sensory, social or communication […]

Five minutes of silent, black and white, edited archive footage by Ivan Marcović introduce the session in order to show the history of the construction of New Belgrade. Sava Centar is a congress space built in 1978 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, whose architecture reflects an idea of the future. Made to host thousands, it now stands […]

Danièle Incalcaterra inherited 5000 hectares in the Paraguayan Chaco. He decided not to allow deforestation to industrially produce transgenic soya and meat, and to restore the virgin forest to the Guaraní Nhandeva, its native inhabitants. A nature reserve called Arcadia was created, and thus began the story of an idea or a utopia, and a […]

In the late summer of 1972, Ângelo de Sousa shoots the ground on which he walks on his way to the beach to the rhythm of his steps. As he watches the footage, he realises he wants to screen them at 5 images per second: he’s mostly interested in the frames, the slow movement, the […]

Gothic “soap opera” shot as an exquisite cadaver during a workshop by Raúl Ruiz in which the staff of a school conducts an odd experiment that turns the students into zombies or amnesiacs.

A filmmaker’s return to Peru sets off an undertaking to (re)connect with the past, linking his native culture with the life he adopted. He recognises scenes and routines. Yet feelings of estrangement also come up, since he is now settled in urban Europe.

The perception of the relation between a music and a photograph is deconstructed by the study of a landscape—the landscape of a hill marked by the standstill of the several real estate projects that intend to transform it.

Featuring films that record and depict issues and events that imply the urgent creation of a community for debate and reflexion. Films that fill the gaps in the media, and that exist through the social networks and other means establishing an absolute implication into reality itself, challenging filmmakers to a daily practice of citizenship.

The city looks upon itself in space; the city feels; the city breathes in the extension of time. The place becomes omniscient. Its connection of mutual tension with human power emphasizes the borders of a controlled nature.

Maria Auxiliadora Lara Barcelos was a political activist, who fought against the Brazilian dictatorship in the 1960s. She was arrested, tortured and banned from Brazil. She committed suicide, in Berlin, in 1976. Alma Clandestina is a biography, and also an immersion in the complexity of her soul, clandestine throughout a big part of her life.

Clarice has just received terrible news. She enters in denial and tries to escape from reality. She comes to the conclusion that her life will never be the same, for she has lost the person who meant the most to her.

Avédis lived in Meudon, and every week he would go to the tomb of his wife, Colombe. Serge Avedikian, his grandson, tells their life of Armenians in France: a love story.

Communion Los Angeles traces the length of California’s oldest freeway. Stunning, stuttering images enmeshed in a vivid tapestry of sound create a rhythmic, seductive, experimental road movie. We fuel up on sardonic high-octane horror, in Carpenter’s Gas Station.

What’d I Say, by Ray Charles, is used as accompaniment to a constantly shifting collage of a female nude, cartoons and atomic bomb explosions.

Extreme slow-motion replays of the July 25, 1946, Operation Crossroads Baker underwater nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific with the music of Terry Riley.

How director Stanley Kubrick helped NASA fake the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. Or how the director of this fake documentary succeeds in showing how manipulating images and TV archives can build a crazy paranoid, yet believable, story.

“I always knew I was adopted. When I asked what had happened, each time I was told a different story. My mother died, and the need to search for my biological mother grew: I wanted to replace those stories I knew were invented by a real name, a face, a voice, a place, a story, […]

In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Designated as “ultra-rightists” in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the Jiabiangou and Mingshui re-education camps. The film invites us to meet the survivors to find out first-hand who these […]

In 1988, D. A. Pennebaker and his partner, Chris Hegedus, followed electropop British band Depeche Mode during their American tour, Music for the Masses. At the same time, another film crew followed a group of teenagers who had won a contest, travelling across the country to California to attend the band’s 101st concert. Now, 30 […]

Akerman, Monteiro, Oliveira, Ruiz, Schroeter and Wenders are among the directors he produced: Deux, trois fois Branco is a portrait of Portuguese producer Paulo Branco, between life and legend.

This section is present at all festivals that are members of the Doc Alliance project. It presents a programme of films nominated for selection by Doc Alliance, including the winner of the Doc Alliance Award, given by a jury of international critics. Doc Alliance is an international network, an initiative from seven European documentary film festivals: […]

This section is present at all the festivals members of the Doc Alliance project. It presents a programme of films nominated for the Doc Alliance Section, including the winner fot the Doc Alliance Award given by an international critics Jury.

The extension of Doclisboa returns to Macau for the sixth year in a row, beginng and ending with the Portuguese poet Camilo Pessanha. Between the 5th and 10th of November, 14 films will be shown, including the winners of Sound & Image Challenge 聲音與影像大比拼 and EU Short-film Challenge 2017. Pé San Ié (pictured), a visual essay […]

Over the past two days, Doclisboa has received pressures from two Embassies to remove films from its programme, or to review texts in its materials. In particular, a film of the International Competition and texts related to the focus “Sailing the Euphrates, Travelling the Time of the World”. No one in the Apordoc team has […]

The whole world will fit in Lisbon once again between 18 and 28 October, for the 16th edition of Doclisboa International Film Festival. The grand opening at Culturgest will host , with the shadow of the Nazi past hanging over Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary General of the United Nations, through Ruth Beckermann’s The Waldheim Waltz, […]

Our Education Project returns with film director Cláudia Alves at the helm of another Docs4Kidsworkshop. Aimed at 12 to 15 year olds, it’s free of charge, starts at 4:00p.m. and will last for three hours, ahead of the festival of the upcoming Saturday, 22 September, in the Galveias Palace Library. The program begins with the screening of two short […]

Words sketch a space and a woman’s life.

François is forty years old and has a trivial life – a wife, a daughter and a good job. One day, he stumbles upon Léo, a former holiday camp partner, on the cover of a detective novel. Together they played a lot with fire and with a third party, Kuntch. François finds Léo, and they […]

Forced to leave his hometown to Damascus, the young Dib grows up against a backdrop of the political upheavals of the 1950s (the end of the military dictatorship in Syria and the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Nasser’s taking of power in Cairo, Egyptian and Syrian unification in 1958) and loses his childish illusions. Partly […]

Completed the year he died, his last masterpiece features music by Terry Riley.

Soon.

Liliana Valente, Sibila Lind • 2018 • Portugal • 86’ A year after the fire at Pedrogão Grande, the skin regenerates, houses are rebuilt and routines are resumed. In the last eight months, we followed the community’s daily life after the fire up-close: Zeca and Vítor, who were seriously injured; Neil and Catherine, and their […]

The ongoing refugee crisis is the biggest mass displacement of people since WW II. Imhoof takes us on a journey through the Italian warships of Operation Mare Nostrum, refugee camps in Southern Italy, and asylum hearings with Swiss authorities, all designed to turn back refugees at all levels. A crisis caused by economic imbalances turning […]

A cargo ship is drifting in an endless sea. The sailors cope with this vast emptiness in time and space each in their own way. The only escape from this confinement comes in thoughts and dreams. Imagination rises and gradually takes the helm.

In a neighbourhood club, a children’s team practices rugby every week. Some fear confrontation, others don’t. On match day, they face the opposing team. No matter the result, there will always be tomorrow.

This is one of the very rare sound films by Ângelo de Sousa. Its subject is his left hand, which becomes pivotal in several of his films since the 1970s (with his experiments with macro lenses). Here, in an intimate sound environment, his hand emerges as a spot, as a shadow or as a moving […]

This is one of the very rare sound films by Ângelo de Sousa. Its subject is his left hand, which becomes pivotal in several of his films since the 1970s (with his experiments with macro lenses). Here, in an intimate sound environment, his hand emerges as a spot, as a shadow or as a moving […]

Parents and teachers are gone. Meanwhile [Entrentanto], a girl and two boys become a love trio. Rui, Nuno and Rita cross three different spaces and times so that they can be alone: a rugby match, a swimming-pool party, the beach. Meanwhile it is spellbound time.

Omar Amiralay’s first film could be considered a perfect example of Pan-arabic filmmaking, celebrating the construction of the dam sponsored by Assad’s goverment.

Just four years after Mouhawala aan Sad al Fourat, Amiralay strongly criticises the impact of the Government’s agricultural and land reforms, showing how the inhabitants of a village along the Euphrates were affected by the dam, and how the Government abandoned them. The Baathist illusion ends fast, the film is banned by the authorities, and […]

PC Saunders of Chesterfield Borough Police spent the best part of a week filming the shenanigans of a posse of illegal street bookies from a first-floor shop window, overlooking Chesterfield marketplace. This surveillance footage became the first film to be used as evidence in a British court. 25 of the 39 defendants were discharged while […]

Three days of cinema, between the 20th and the 22nd November, when an extension by Doclisboa gets to the auditorium at Vila Real Theatre, in an effort by this organisation with UTAD – Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro. To show some of the films from the festival’s 15th edition:   20 November, 6:30pm Pesar Madalena […]

The issue of the borders of the former USSR territories proved to be a time bomb. Extinction is an eclectic patchwork of (fiction and non-fiction) materials. Kolya, who’s a Moldovan national, but declares himself to be a citizen of Transnistria, guides us through fragments that carry us to the collective imagery of the Soviet Union. […]

Ten years after Agarrando pueblo, the filmmaker reencounters one of its main characters, a street artist who is still performing the same show. Watching the film, the artist reflects upon his life, work and the film itself.

They were called fahavalo—enemies—because they rebelled in 1947 against French colonial authorities in Madagascar. Today, filmmaker Marie-Clémence Andriamonta-Paes takes us where the events took place, on a journey to meet the last witnesses. They tell us about their fight for independence and their long months of resistance in the jungle, armed only with spears and […]

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 is a provocative and comedic look at the times in which we live. It explores the two most important questions of the Trump Era: How the f**k did we get here, and how the f**k do we get out?

The partnership between Apordoc and Arcos de Valdevez City Council, whereDoc’s Kingdom is annually held, goes far back. And finds new strength in the cycle “Family Images”, a whole month of films, between the 30th of November and December. At Cineclube de Arcos de Valdevez, a selection of short films from the Greens Years section […]

General Info When will the next festival take place? The 14th edition of Doclisboa – International Film Festival will take place from Thursday 20th to Sunday 30th October 2016. When will the full programme for the 2016 edition be announced? The full programme will be announced in September 2016 on this website. Keep checking our […]

The Heart Beat section of Doclisboa’18 features films dedicated to the arts, through a selection bursting with great characters and stories from all over the world. This includes two great ladies of the punk movement: Joan Jett, star of Kevin Kerslake’s Bad Reputation, and iconic fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, whom director Lorna Tucker presents in […]

Since 1981, Western Sahara is divided by a wall that splits the country in two. ON the one side, the Polisario Front (a revolutionary force fighting for independence). On the other side, the territories under military occupation by the State of Morocco, which in spite of the 1991 peace agreement keeps its presence with the […]

The Euphrates is the longest river in the Middle East, crossing its main states (Turkey, Syria, Iraq), but also countries such as Armenia and Kurdistan. It is one of the four rivers that form the earthly paradise that is Mesopotamia. It carries images, stories and people from Mount Ararat to Shatt El Arab, disregarding the […]

Making use of rather different languages and narrative strategies, these films lie between the realm of heritage and the imagining of specific territories, be they topographic or virtual, dreamed or lost. From 1960s Taiwan to Sokolo, Mali; from an imaginary Bavarian Yodelburg, from where the Philippine lunar mission is launched, to rural France; from Canada […]

We are dlighted to announce the four projects that have been chosen to participate in the Development Workshop by our Arché lab, that will take place within the Porto/Post/Doc film festival, between the 27th of November and the 1st of December: Aiguallum, David Tena Reiff (Spain) Às Vezes não sou eu Quem Fala Por Mim, Miguel Clara Vasconcelos […]

A film director follows the autumnal trail of leaves that once graced the branches. A girl builds autumns as she wanders in a labyrinth of leaves. A man persists on watering the place the tree left behind. A woman who lived that autumn. All of them in a space called Jorge Listopad.

We are delighted to announce two further confirmations to festival section ”From the Earth to the Moon”: Frederick Wiseman and Rithy Panh. The American director takes us to the landscapes of “Monrovia, Indiana”, revealing the daily routine of a countryside community of 1400 inhabitants, founded in 1834. Through observing the functioning of the community’s organisations […]

Friedkin Uncut offers an introspective glimpse of the life and artistic career of William Friedkin, the extraordinary and unconventional director of cult movies such as The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, Cruising and To Live and Die in L.A. For the first time, Friedkin has decided to lay himself bare and guide viewers on a […]

Historical panorama of Colombian cinema between 1970 and 1995, year of the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, pointing out the relationship between the State and cinema, the film comprises four parts: the contempt of price increase; the state of things; the things of the State; memories of underdevelopment.

From the Earth to the Moon continues to be the place where we chart the world of today, intersecting the past and in it finding the future being built. Steve Sprung, Wang Bing, Želimir Žilnik, Marie-Clémence Andriamonta-Paes, Frederick Wiseman, Rithy Panh and Stefano Savona return. The crimes committed during Franco’s regime and Uruguay’s military dictatorship […]

Mixing fragmented stories of people with views of a landscape in perpetual transformation, we travel intimately in the footsteps of a contemporary Alice in what was once a leafy forest populated by birds and water sources and is today a modern day “concrete jungle” in the centre of the infamous northern district of Marseille. Nature […]

Two children go through the Bastille opera house, from set and costume workshops to an immense and empty stage. An improvised escape with the dance movement and the voices of women and men at work.

Inspired by the Dolomites mountain range in Northeast Italy, a battle theatre in World Wars I and II, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchicontinue to explore issues of war and peace. The film uses shots of ordinary toys found in the area, many missing limbs and other pieces, to represent, in both direct and oblique ways, the […]

“In August 2013, al-Ghouta, once a venue for family outings and picnics on the outskirts of Damascus, was targeted by a chemical attack. Years before, it was a theme park, the hypercommodified location of Bab al-hara, a successful Syrian TV series on the resistance of a Damascene neighbourhood against the French occupation. After its military […]

Based on YouTubers footage, Dominic Gagnon comes up with a constellation that may be the spirit of the world in the age of fake news and information spreading so quickly. Going South offers the coordinates that establish connections that are only possible because we remain online.

The film comprises two parts: the first is a sound and image counterpoint to the architecture of Cali; the second part gathers testimonies by artists who have had the city as a theme and by those responsible for the destruction of the architectural heritage.

This is a journey in which the creator of this film tries to find the origin for his creation. While driving on the freeway to Puzi, Chiayi County, Yao-Tung Wu and Tom continue a conversation left unfinished two decades ago. The dialogue falters; clearly they live in two different worlds. After 20 years, the dark […]

After L’Image manquante and Exil, Rithy Panh continues his personal and spiritual exploration. Les Tombeaux sans noms searches for a path to peace. When a child, who lost the greater part of his family under the Khmer Rouge, embarks on a search for their graves, whether clay or on spiritual ground, what does he find […]

Green Years is divided into three parts. In the opening session, Onde o Verão vai, by David Pinheiro Vicente, sets the tone for a programme that dwells on the emergence of the first desire. Then we have 20 films in competition, both shorts and features, providing us with the views of new directors. Finally, we […]

David Pinheiro Vicente made his debut in the Green Years section in 2016 with Simão. Two years later, he presents Onde o Verão vai (Episódios da Juventude) to an international audience. In this special opening session, we follow up on his development as an author, and based on his second film we establish a network […]

Drifting through the densely forested landscape of southern Slovenia, the film encounters stories that emerge from the land itself, measuring the gap between an event of popular resistance and its lingering remains within a foreclosed present.

Chilly Gonzales, Mstislav Rostropovich, Blue Note jazz label, Depeche Mode, electro pop, country music, jazz, fado, poetry, music from India and Madagascar, free and sexual dance of Jamaican women – Doclisboa will be full of music and dancing. We will pay tribute to the Berlin Volksbühne and to the Paris Opera. We will screen William […]

História Secreta da Aviação is a seminal reflexion on what rises and is cut down. It is based on the text by the same name by Manuel Zimbro, in which one dwells on what stops man from flying and on the impact of that limitation on nature. The film convenes images of the devastation caused […]

Based on the novel (1885) by Alexander Shirvanzade, the film describes the everyday life in the provincial town of Shamakhi during the 1860s and 70s, in pre-revolutionary Armenia, revolving around the drama of two young lovers who fall victim to the cruel and omnipotent traditional rules and laws. “In contrast to the many examples of […]

A film-inquiry shot with a still camera. The inhabitants of Cali answer questions about happiness, money, love, dreams, how they spend their free time and how they would define themselves.

A tetralogy that takes place between nightmare and hallucination, shot between 1995 and 1998, in which Hoolboom’s black-and-white, high-contrast, 16mm cinema simultaneously tries out body manipulation and the limits of perversion and eschatology by portraying the bourgeois taboos within the capitalist society. Symmetrically organised, the four chapters are called Precious, Scum, Kisses and Shiteater.

“A girl in red walks through Tehran. Spring has come. The world learns how to speak. Words live in stones, at the bottom of a salt lake, in the graves of poets. The film arises from my fascination with the Persian language and poetry.” Mira de Boose

Antonio is a man who struggled to reconstruct his heart after experiencing psychosis and social stigmatisation. His face and his voice confront the spectator with the dignity, pain and bravery of his critical knowledge. Alone and with no help, he strikes our defences with the violence, tenderness, clarity and senselessness of a true defector.

“Every day of her life, Angela kept a diary, filled with words and drawings, in which she recorded public and private matters, meetings, things she had read, everything. Now I reread these diaries and see again the film-diary of all those years. I am alone now, after many years of life and artistic work together. […]

A man recollects a moment (was it any longer than that?) in the aptly named city of Mecca. A conversation ensues in the crowd. The touch of language. Framing shots by luminous shooter Taravat Khalili.

On the trail of grandmothers, great-grandmothers and their peculiar love stories, the filmmaker searches for ways to reconstruct those stories, until the members of the family no longer know what came next and the stories live on only in landscapes of plaster and paint.

“For two years, we filmed in an ancient seventeenth-century monastery, which houses the Conservatory of Music of Lisbon. Moved by our love for this anachronistic place, for the music that is played there and for the richness of its teaching, Il sogno mio d’amore immerses us in the universe of the transmission of music between […]

Based on the only four surviving shots of the first Colombian silent film, María (1921), by directors Máximo Calvo (Colombia) and Alfredo del Diestro (Spain), the film combines historical research, interviews and scenic reconstruction to rescue the memory of a lost film.

60-year-old meteorologist Ilie has spent his entire life working on a mountaintop far away from his family. Lucian, a 22-year-old novice, has just arrived on his first year of duty. Employed by the Romanian state, the two meteorologists work on an outpost in the mountainous region of Transylvania. Their Kafkaesque job is to keep track […]

In the Greek island of Leros, the voices of Kadio, a 103-year-old woman, Lefteris, a fisherman, and Ayat, a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl, connect the atrocities of WWII to the present-day Syrian War, reflecting on a past that remains alive today.

“Last Fall, a good childhood friend of mine, Florin, told me that his brother, Laurentiu, invented a new sport by changing the rules of the football game. One month later I went to my hometown, Vaslui, with a small film crew, to learn more about the new sport…” — Corneliu Porumboiu

Director Ammar al-Beik, curator and performer Donatella Della Ratta and filmmaker Aghyad Abou Koura will lead a practical laboratory on performativity, documentation and the instant of filming. Based on the participants’ personal history and artistic practice, they will be asked to prepare some working materials, which will then be the base for the making of […]

An intimate look at the inside of a fine arts artist’s workshop, showing her relation to space and artistic production. The film reveals the way they interconnect as an expression of time and gesture in the body of work.

The International Competition comprises 22 films, of which 12 are world premieres and 10 international premieres. These films come from 21 countries, showcasing a formal and aesthetic diversity of looks on the world, and distinct ways of thinking and acting on that which surrounds us.

Lisbon Docs – International Financing and Co-production Forum for Documentary Film is one of the main documentary film workshops and pitching events in Portugal. In its 19th edition, it remains as a benchmark for professionals interested in developing new tools and strategies to finance and co-produce their documentary film projects.

James Benning is commonly known for making formally radical films, having an attentive and patient look, capturing the landscape and permeating it with time and history. This year, we invite him to Doclisboa to present his first feature film, 11 x 14, which had been unavailable until this stunning restoration, and his latest film, L. […]

Doclisboa has regularly presented Hoolboom’s films (including Buffalo Death Mask, Lacan Palestine and We Make Couples). In these two sessions, we present his most recent works and House of Pain, from 1995-98: a seminal film of a potential cinema of transgression, where the issues of the political body, relations within capitalist societies, and the representation […]

Self-portrait of the “Cali Group”, also known as “Caliwood”, a group of cinephiles who, in the midst of the wild partying and the historical chaos of the 1970s and 80s, was able to produce a body of work that is a fundamental part of Colombia’s film heritage. It is also the medical history of the […]

International Competition Agnès Godard After working as camera assistant and camera operator in the 1980s next to Henri Alekan, Sacha Vierny and Robby Müller, she became director of photography in 1990 and collaborated with Claire Denis, Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, Peter Greenaway, Ursula Meier, André Téchiné, Peter Handke, Emanuele Crialese and Érick Zonca. Among others, […]

JURY   Brigitta Burger-Utzer Brigitta Burger-Utzer studied theatre and photography, and has a degree in cultural management. She co-founded sixpackfilm in 1990, of which she has been managing director since 1992. She has designed and/or organised numerous film series in Vienna and for international venues. In 2003, she edited the book Frank Films: The Film […]

In June this year, the Israeli Parliament passed the bill that criminalises the capturing and disclosing of images of soldiers from the Israeli Defence Forces in the course of their work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. New videos of those who resist and do not accept being silenced arrive in the Internet everyday—they are the […]

Warany z Komodo is based on two parallel stories: a group of autistic adults living at Farm Life (a therapy centre near Krakow) and young parents Agata and Franek, who want to sacrifice their own son. We meet the characters in their everyday lives, works and ordinary behaviours, and question ourselves about the meaning of […]

“On August 21, 2017, I travelled to Madras, Oregon and made one 45-minute shot starting at 10 am. It was to be a very special day which I had planned to attend for a few months. There was a forest fire to the south which partly filled the sky with a light haze. In the […]

By a miracle, on an autumn day at the Centquatre Paris, ten dancers came to show what they could do at the event Fous de danse [Mad about dance] initiated by Musée de la danse [Dance Museum] and Boris Charmatz. They looked exalted, unswervingly optimistic, fifteen years old and full of the sophisticated references of […]

Chouchan Kébadian began to paint at the age of 70. A desolate, but fascinating painting, with oriental and musical colours, composing her portrait.

The krump dance was born in the Los Angeles ghettos after the 1995 riots. Clément Cogitore creates a battle between urban culture and Rameau’s music on the stage of the Bastille Opera.

On the eve of the year 2000, Abderrahmane Sissako, a Mauritanian filmmaker living in France, decides to return to Sokolo, a small village in Mali, to meet his father. He arrives in the village, changes clothes, hops on a bicycle and wanders the streets and the fields. That’s when he comes across Nana, who is […]

In 1977, Armenfilm released Henrik Malyan’s Nahapet, an epic adaptation of the tragic history of the Armenian nation, based on Hrachya Kochar’s story about a genocide survivor. Nahapet, which means ‘forefather of a nation’, walks along endlessly, like “a generalized archetype, who comes from the remote past and goes into the future”, as Semyon Freilikh […]

Trained as an electrician, Nazih Shahbandar became fascinated with the technology behind film production and was one of its pioneers in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1947, he set up a studio fitted with film equipment that was almost entirely of his own fabrication. An ode to cinema made by the three masters of Syrian […]

A film about the consequences of the VI Pan American Games on the city of Cali, seen from the point of view of those who could not afford to enter the stadiums.

Tidal movement. Three generations of women descendants of African slaves divided between the need to leave and the will to stay, between the uncertainty concerning the future and the strength of ancestry.

A nude woman who could be Marilyn Monroe in a found footage in five segments, with the song I’m Through With Love playing. An essay on celebrity, the image of women and voyeurism, among others.

Ângelo de Sousa shoots the quince at his house, trying out lenses and cardboard cut-outs that act as diaphragms, playing with variations of light, colour and shape. The vegetable shapes and the light produce movements that range from pictorial abstraction to the physical nature of shooting, thus recalling a possible notion of intimacy.

“On December 28, 2016, I travelled to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and made two 30-minute shots, one starting at 8:57 in the morning and the other at 3:12 in the afternoon. Between the two shots, a weather system passed through from the west bringing with it a brief period of light snow. The morning sky […]

In the city, there’s a place where man and machine blend. Below ground, the human being is stripped of identity and swollen into a collective mechanism.

Halfway through the first complete retrospective in Europe of his films, Luis Ospina will talk about how he works and how he has been making his films since the early 1970s and up to now. He will describe what was the Cali Group, and how it was to live in the 1970s in Colombia and […]

A famous actor loses himself under the skin of the great lovers he portrays. Inspired by the romance between Pola Negri and Rudolph Valentino during Hollywood’s golden years in the 1920s, Mélodrame recycles the style and rulebook of the silent period. A true discovery by a mysterious, unfairly unknown director.

Milla is 17 and Leo is not much lot older. They find love and take refuge in a small town on the English Channel, far from the world. They have a son. They try to invent a life for themselves. Somewhere between documentary and fiction, through the film’s free and fluid construction, featuring Severine Jonckeere […]

In the north of the pampas, the remains of a population lie hidden under the soil; they’ve been this way for more than a century. Their casual discovery is the starting point with which the film tries to puzzle out that mystery. There where the great agribusiness grabs more and more land for soy, the […]

Mischka follows his son’s family on vacation as always, but he is abandoned in a highway rest area. Gégène lives in a retirement home, and decides to go look for her daughter, whom she seldom sees. 15-year-old Jane is on her way with her little brother to meet her father in Gironde. And Joli Coeur, […]

A British-Belgian girl works in the secluded hills of southern Portugal. A group of students in Brussels trains diplomacy skills to take part in simulations of UN conferences. In the rehearsal room, on unwrought land, burgeon essential words and gestures.

A number of young girls lie asleep between the intersections and the architectural elements of Terragni’s Casa del Fascio in Como, one of the most important examples of modernist architecture. Around the sleeping bodies, some presences developed in 3D move around the space in obscure activities. A place of promiscuity and ambiguity between formats (35mm […]

The war in Abkhazia ended more than twenty years ago. But the shadows wandering in the corridors of the psychiatric hospital still remind us of its impact. Sometimes we see ourselves in those shadows and glimpse fragments of reality in their monologues. The monochromatic way they see the world carries many more meanings than we […]

Monrovia, Indiana (population 1,400), founded in 1834, is primarily a farming community. The film explores the conflicting stereotypes and illustrates how values like community service, duty, spiritual life, generosity and authenticity are formed, experienced and lived. It gives a complex and nuanced view of daily life, with emphasis on community organizations and institutions, and provides […]

Axolotls are water salamanders almost blind with regenerative abilities who refuse to metamorphose into maturity. In captivity, they collectively decide to develop eyelids to block the brightness in their tanks. The film intersects the axolotl’s post-colonial history, its unique and almost unearthly biology, its critical condition bordering extinction, and its recent, anachronistic online popularity as […]

Georges leaves Paris to go to a seminar on the opposite side of the country. When the car breaks down on the side of the highway, mechanic Serge proposes to fix it, and he takes Georges to his home, promising to take care of the car the following day. As the repair seems to go […]

Rostropovich, one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century, was forced to flee his country in 1972. He defended Solzhenitsyn who was expelled from the USSR for having published The Gulag Archipelago. Deprived of his citizenship by the Soviet authorities, Rostropovich settled in Paris and Washington. To tell the story of this extraordinary man, […]

Having James Benning and Mike Hoolboom as invited directors, placing in dialogue films from different moments in their lives, and a small theme focus, New Visions continues to be a section experimenting with cinema, its history, its strategies and its vanishing points. “Transmission, Imagined Territories” summarises one of the festival’s lines of force: to film […]

Colma is a small town in Northern California with about a thousand inhabitants and two million graves. It was created with the sole purpose of housing the dead of the region. Some of its inhabitants share their thoughts on what it’s like to live in this modern-day necropolis.

Arché is a laboratory of professional activities aiming directors, producers and other film professionals. It intends to provide tools to the creation of new film projects, as well as to provide moments of reflection for its creation and formation. Arché is born out of the need and responsibility Doclisboa has been experiencing in terms of […]

In what way does contemporaneity look at objectuality, the world of objects and their relations to human beings? Objects are among us, we’re connected to them, they talk; we create them, but we’re also created by them; they affect us, they inhabit our imaginary, they are part of our memory, together with us they create […]

Undefined intelligences analyse an assemblage of signals they produce about an infected planet when a resistant matter comes and disturbs the flux of stories, time and space they are trying to understand. Interrogating coloniality and its rhetoric the film evokes questions about the stories were told and our possibilities to disrupt them.

Talal Derki returns to his homeland where he gains the trust of a radical Islamist family, sharing their daily life for over two years. His camera focuses on Osama and his younger brother, Ayman, providing an extremely rare insight into what it means to grow up in an Islamic Caliphate.

Summertime. A boy goes to the river with his friends. In four episodes, the heat and the humidity of the forest increase the desire among the youngsters.

In 1986, the Uruguayan Parliament passed a law granting amnesty for all crimes and human rights violations committed by the military and police during the dictatorship (1973-85). A public initiative arose, calling for a referendum in which the law would be subject to the vote of the people. Unas preguntas uses U-matic footage, mostly of […]

Júlia Murat compares the several media approaches to the Brazilian demonstrations taking place between June 2013 and July 2014—the mainstream media, as opposed to citizens and activist collectives making a record of the events.

Before his imminent death from AIDS, Colombian artist Lorenzo Jaramillo looks back on his life through the five senses. Like Wim Wenders in Lightning Over Water, Luis Ospina films his friend while talking with passion about painting, cinema and many other topics. The moving portrait of a brilliant mind.

Writer Fernando Vallejo returns to Medellin after an absence of over 30 years. He meets 16-year-old Alexis, the kind of killer who knocks people off on command. The two are immediately attracted to each other and love grows between them. From street to street, church to church, murder to murder, Fernando discovers through Alexis the […]

Over the Limit shows how the successful Russian system for training athletes transgresses boundaries. Elite rhythmic gymnast Margarita Mamun has reached a crucial moment in her career. She’s soon to retire, but has one final goal set out for her: winning Olympic gold. A nail-biting, behind-the-scenes drama about the intense physical and mental labour put […]

Water, fire and human crowds move in such intricate and infinitely variable ways that they are near impossible to capture in a code or to simulate convincingly. Yet some companies are coming very close.

In a society that increasingly resists new ways of thinking and aesthetic transgressions, Frank Castorf calls theatre “the last partisan”. As its director since the early 1990s, Castorf made the Berlin Volksbühne a place of new departures and the avant-garde. The film accompanies Castorf on his farewell production of Faust, while also providing a glimpse […]

Philosopher Paul dies, leaving his partner and a three-year-old daughter. Another son of Paul, young Alexandre, comes to their door. The three will travel in mourning. The film is forged out of a door left open by Paul: “modal realism”, the idea that any description of our actual world might be the description of another […]

Camilo Pessanha, the greatest Portuguese Symbolist poet, wrote and rewrote his only work – Clepsidra – until his death. The film is neither a portrait of him, nor an illustration of his poems, but rather an essay of the cinematographic form of his voluntary exile in Macau. How does one film such a unique opium addict? By […]

Anifa survives a kidnap. Isa grows old surrounded by fear. In the heart of Maputo, in Mozambique, these two sisters face together a place where the belief in black magic still haunts albino people.

Eduardo “la Rata” Carvajal talks about his work as a photographer and video maker in the Colombian film scene in the 1970s and 80s.

O presente documento explicita os termos como a APORDOC — ASSOCIAÇÃO PELO DOCUMENTÁRIO, com sede em Casa do Cinema, Rua da Rosa, 277 – 2º, 1200-385 Lisboa, contribuinte n.º 504649418, procede ao tratamento das informações recolhidas e utilizadas no seu website. A APORDOC — ASSOCIAÇÃO PELO DOCUMENTÁRIO protege a privacidade dos seus dados pessoais sendo […]

This year, the Portuguese Competition comprises 18 films. Free and unexpected forms coexist with the diversity of places and times behind these films.

In one single shot, actress Rosario Jaramillo acts out a monologue based on an interview with her brother, painter Lorenzo Jaramillo.

The participants present their projects to a panel of commissioning editors and decision-makers from documentary funding institutions and leading channels in international co-productions. To be in the audience is a unique chance to observe what works and what does not work in today’s international market and to learn about possible ways of financing, co-producing and […]

The story of an old and bedridden sugar tycoon whose strange ailment requires constant transfusions. The sick man’s son blackmails three of his employees into providing a steady supply, which they obtain by kidnapping and killing children, withdrawing all their blood and then discarding the naked bodies in waste lands. The disappearance of the young […]

Pushkar is a small town in Rajasthan and one of the holiest places of Hinduism. Once a year, the town and the desert surrounding it turn into a sprawling fun fair with Ferris wheels and carousels, music and colourful dance performances, attracting thousands of people. Filmmaker Kamal Swaroop explores the ancient myths of Indian gods […]

1. General Information 1.1 Doclisboa wants to question the present of film, bringing along its history and assuming cinema as a mode of freedom. By refusing the categorization of film practice, it searches for the new problematics that cinematic image implies, in its multiple ways of engagement with the contemporary. Doclisboa tries to be a […]

1. Arché is a laboratory of professional activities taking place in the context of Doclisboa – International Film Festival. 2. Arché is a space of deep reflection on film projects in different stages of production. It is focused on projects and auteurism, and approaches the production process mainly as an authorial project. Thus, Arché is […]

Archival footage and reports on the day J. F. Kennedy was assassinated. The repetition turns it into a meditation on that event and its representation.

Two years after the Lebanese General Security confiscated his passport, a filmmaker returning from Aleppo to complete his first feature film got stuck in Beirut, unable to complete it, because of the hard conditions he and thousands of Syrian refugees suffer from, sometimes even pushing them to commit physical or moral suicide. The film is […]

Doclisboa presents the first complete retrospective of Colombian filmmaker Luis Ospina in Europe. His accurate and humorous vision of his country, his strong cinephilia and his commitment to the preservation of the past make him a key figure in Latin America’s recent film history. His films tell the story of a generation known as the […]

Two journeys take place in two different periods. One is a return by rail, passing through two continents (Europe and Asia). The second is an old family photograph tracing back to war life. The rhythmic swaying of the train merges the past and the present, and reveals a forgotten memory, which was covered in dust […]

An island is a piece of land surrounded by water on all its parts. A reunion is the act of making two or more things coincide at one point, sometimes colliding with one another. Ilan travels to Reunion Island to meet his father.

An extended time, a previously prepared game between shorter and longer exposure times according to the light conditions of the several travelled places. The elements (vegetation, fruit, other objects) arise following the pace of the steps. At times, the black nearly takes over the image; at other times, the artist appears in the image through […]

The gestures and spirits from Vilem Flusser’s text and Bulgaria’s bohemian youth – both from the late 1960s – merge into a collaged, audio-visual dialogue where a makeshift, obscure, trans-territorial bond is conceived. A film essay on us in a state of flux.

A rural poem made of bodies and landscapes – the echo of a historical time embedded in the passing of time in a village in Beira, an anthill of people and life that perpetuates the stories and the gestures, providing a glimpse into each one’s humanity.

The Euphrates is a dream, a river, a myth, a space that does not exist, the Garden of Eden, Ararat, the (lost) ark, Mesopotamia, Babylon, the Eastern origin of the Western world. 2,700 km-long, the Euphrates is the result of the confluence of two main watercourses. The first one, the Kara Su, rises in Turkish […]

Doclisboa takes part in a European festival structure, DocAlliance, with its own online channel. Where now, and over the next two weeks, you can see some of the films selected for Doclisboa’18 thematic focus, curated by co-director Davide Oberto, under the title Sailing the Euphrates, Travelling the Time of the World: Yol: the Full Version, […]

In the rural outskirts of Gaza City, a small community of farmers is about to celebrate a wedding. It’s going to be the first celebration since the latest war. Amal, Fuad, their brothers and cousins have lost their parents, their houses and their olive trees. The neighbourhood where they live is being rebuilt. As they […]

“We all know that Andy Warhol made a film lasting more than 5 hours of a man sleeping. After viewing it, I asked myself, ‘What would happen if I removed Warhol’s tedious passages?’ This is why I decided to film myself sleeping during 10 hours with an automatic shutter that took a frame every 10 […]

Sociologists and psychiatrists agree that people exhibit only what they want to show, building an identity that is put to the consideration of others to receive feedback and be validated. For this reason, there are those who consider the selfie trend as an act of vanity that indicates narcissism and selfishness, or a lack of […]

Two boys capitalize on the sale of motorbikes. A young woman is involved in an illegal money transfer. Two brothers with financial debts have to appear in court. The monetary rules are as firm as the heavy walls of the Palace of Justice.

Chilly Gonzales is a Grammy-winning composer and virtuoso pianist known for his eccentric shows. He has worked with Jane Birkin, Boys Noize, Jarvis Cocker and Drake, among others. The film follows Gonzales from his native Canada to late 1990’s underground Berlin, and via Paris to the world’s great philharmonic halls. The film interweaves Gonzales’ video […]

Earlier this year, Doclisboa and Goethe-Institut Portugal devised a program of films to highlight the quality of Deutch cinema in its archives. And came up to a vision based on dialog, repeated once again between the 31st of October and the 5th of December, every friday at 6:30pm, free admittance. 31 October 6:30pm Those who go those […]

Springtime in Paris. Men and women sink into their intimate, loving, sexual thoughts. Around them, time seems to be suspended, the noises of the world disappear, movements freeze, and the film itself hesitates between cinema and photography.

A didactic documentary about slapstick made with archive footage and based on Eileen Bowser’s essay, Subverting the Conventions: Slapstick as Genre.

A waitress is trying to help drug addicts. One of her friends gets trapped by the police. Juliet Berto, who died too early, was a great actress in Godard and Rivette’s films and directed three wonderful movies, Neige, Cap Canaille and Havre, which deserve to be rediscovered.

Three decades after his second burial, Hungarian executed Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, is out of the grave again. Facing the new extreme right wave in government, Imre tries to find a way out, to die again.

Songs for Madagascar offers an intimate journey across Madagascar and Europe, closely following the creative work of a group of musicians. Erick Manana, Justin Vali, Dama Mahaleo, Olombelo Ricky, Jaojoby and Régis Gizavo, the six most famous Malagasy musicians, living thousands of miles apart, unite to use their art as a megaphone to raise awareness […]

Like a blurry watercoulor, the Euphrates painted the lands he touches with the shades of exile.

Daughter of ex-baseball player turned successful business man Dennis Ranzau, Taelor grew up in a gilded cage in Houston, Texas. At 15 years old, the violent and sudden death of her father tolls the bell of an idyllic childhood and drags her into a life of drug-abuse, guns and madness, all stemming from the inherent […]

In the early 1990’s, Croatia was involved in a military conflict with Serbia. Criminals used the chaos of war to harass and rob Serbian civilians living in Croatia. Aleksandra Zec was murdered. The perpetrators were soon found but no one has ever been convicted for the crime. A quarter-century later, Oliver Frljič is working on […]

In his debut feature film, the director explores the inexorable dissolution of a family, ironically during the planning of a wedding, the kind of ritual that ought to bond family members together in shared joy. The film exposes the divisive dynamics of patriarchal oppression, and the terrible connections between familial and socio-political violence. Nujim An-Nahar […]

One morning of June 2005, guards of the Chilean National Fine Arts Museum noted that Auguste Rodin’s sculpture, worth millions, had been stolen. It was the biggest art robbery in the Chilean history. 24 hours later, a shy young art student returned the piece arguing that he had stolen it as part of an artistic […]

Workshops
 October 21st – 25th 
From the 21st to the 25th, Arché participants will be working on their projects in one of the three Workshops. Writing and Project Development Workshop
 October 23rd – 25th
 Culturgest – Room 6 Viewing and Discussion of Works-in-Progress Workshop 
October 21st – 24th
 Culturgest – Forum Debates Development in Dialogue […]

The Studio Diaries are a series of 100 short films created throughout 2018 by artist filmmakers Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais of The Underground Film Studio. Over the course of seven months, the short films capture the workings of their daily creative practice, but, more than simply documenting, the Studio Diary Series is creative thought […]

Call for projects are now open for the second edition of Arché in Porto. Between 27th of November and 1st of December, Arché will present a project development workshop tutored by Luciano Rigolini and a pitching session open to all film professionals. An artistic residency award will be given to one of the projects by […]

Call for projects are now open for the second edition of Arché in Porto. Between 27th of November and 1st of December, Arché will present a project development workshop tutored by Luciano Rigolini and a pitching session open to all film professionals. An artistic residency award will be given to one of the projects by […]

The film tracks Fresnel lenses from their site of production to their exhibition in a museum of lighthouses and navigational devices. It also examines the diverse social contexts in which optics are implicated, contrasting the system of triangular trade that followed the first European arrivals in the ‘New World’ with the political potential seen in […]

Based on travel films from the 1960s belonging to the Ideias no Escuro archive, the film questions the encounter between the Europeans and the natives from Tahiti.

Organisation Apordoc – Portuguese Documentary Association Co-Production Cinema São Jorge Culturgest Cinemateca Portuguesa Direction Cíntia Gil Davide Oberto Executive Directors Bruno Sousa Joana Gusmão Associate Programmer Agnès Wildenstein Programme Coordinators Miguel Ribeiro Joana Sousa Suzanne De Baene (Assistant) Luis Ospina Retrospective Curator Agnès Wildenstein Euphrates Focus Curator Davide Oberto Programme Agnès Wildenstein Ana Pereira Cíntia […]

The film follows Tarcísio Amaro, a retired miner living in the vicinity of Serra da Estrela, interweaving thoughts on the past and the present, and looking at the decline of rural life in the deserted Portuguese hinterland.

Somewhere in the Alentejo there are two great ovens covered in dirt where a man makes charcoal. Essential elements like fire, water, air, earth and space reflect, breath and celebrate the rhythm of the Earth.

On the Tagus riverside, in an ancient fishing community, a man lives between the lonesome peacefulness of the river and the relations that ground him to the land. Terra Franca depicts the fisherman’s life across the four seasons and follows the contingencies of life experienced by Albertino Lobo.

Although it may not be obvious, António is in harmony. His everyday life is death, but there is no darkness or mourning in him. Life and death, unceremoniously.

“The story of a homeless man and his journey” (Rui Simões). Revisiting a man with whom he had made a film and became friends, and who in the meantime disappeared, Rui Simões frugally reflects on his standing as an author next to those he films. Loving process, projection or discipline of loss, the images change […]

The film takes inspiration from the memory of a town in the province of Buenos Aires and its youngsters. Through tales and oral accounts, it tries to make a record of a town that is disappearing underwater.

Aretha Franklin passed away this year, but her unbelievable performance of Think in this classic by John Landis will keep on spreading her magic. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi aren’t the only stars in this film. A session dedicated to the memory of the Queen of Soul.

Resorting to found footage and editing, the film creates the illusion that Washington has been bombed from the air.

Juan is 16 years old. He has Asperger and an awful lot of melodramatic stories ready to be written and directed. His idea of fun is creating soap operas together with his frail 96-year-old grandmother, Rosa, who is his most important lead actress, co-editor, writer and partner in crime. Filmmaking allows them to share new […]

Juan is 16 years old. He has Asperger and an awful lot of melodramatic stories ready to be written and directed. His idea of fun is creating soap operas together with his frail 96-year-old grandmother, Rosa, who is his most important lead actress, co-editor and writer.

Less than year from the Spanish elections, the polls season the population’s breakfast every morning. Meanwhile, Death is unmoved by statistics and carries out its programme.

French actor Jean-François Stévenin has an amazing filmography, from Godard to Pialat, from Rivette to Demy, including parts in Silent Streams, by Philippe Ramos, included in the International Competition, and in Snow, by Juliet Berto, shown in the scope of Luis Ospina’s carte blanche. But he is also a talented free filmmaker. His three films, […]

2018 • France • 132 min The Films of the World is an unpublished series of fifty-one cinétracts by Frank Smith. Cinétracts are originally short documentaries constructed from national and international photographic material, an initiative launched in May 1968 by filmmaker Chris Marker. The Films of the World revives this cinematic experience, both poetic and […]

What if your country is not your fatherland and your language not your mother-tongue? Guided by her mother’s voice, Olga Lombaers Muñoz dwells in the Spanish village of her late grandparents during the brief period of the saffron harvest.

Can such a harmless activity like fishing in the city turn into a political gesture of unsuspected potential? Or on the contrary is it not just the melancholic confirmation of our defeat and powerlessness, and its normalisation? What happens when we run out of words?

The life of a Polish farmer, Wojtek, and his immediate environment, shown through the eyes of the young Swiss filmmaker, Sebastian. Despite the harsh working conditions he has known since childhood, he has never lost his joy of life, warm-heartedness and humour. Living all alone in a big house, he likes to welcome guests in […]

Journalist Saša Uhlová spent six months exploring working conditions at the worst-paid jobs in the Czech Republic: in a hospital washroom, at a poultry plant, behind a cash register and at a waste sorting facility. She then wrote a series of articles about people working invisible jobs under shocking conditions, which Rychlíková turned into a […]

Le lac perdu is an invitation to a journey, a dreamlike stroll through the world of the Garnier and Bastille opera houses. The magical and fleeting nature of performance is brought into perspective in the luminous and disturbing work of Claude Lévêque, who in this film returns to the sensory perturbations at work in his […]

“In 1992, responding to uprisings against the so-called “Gulf War”, dictator Saddam Hussein ordered the uprooting of reeds and papyri in an area named Al Ahwar (the Marshes), and forced the people to the border with Iran. Then he dried the whole area destroying a five thousand-year-old habitat. Just before doing so, he ordered all […]

December 2016, a demonstration in front of the parliament in Vienna. Two men on the fringes of the mass of people begin talking about the destruction of Aleppo, the Taliban, and the few supporters of war who establish their claim to truth violently against the lives of the many who are uninvolved. The brief exchange […]

Richard Chen follows three art college students HUANG Yong-song, MOU Tunfei and HUANG Gui-rong as they enjoy an excursion into the mountains in Hsinchu. The three interviewees talk about their artistic ideals and dreams, how only KMT party members were eligible for scholarships, and their views on the Vietnam War. The song California Dreamin’ plays […]

In 1953, five black men robbed a factory. As they clumsily escaped, a security guard was shot and killed. One of the assailants, Paul Crump, was charged with murder and sentenced to death. Friedkin believed Crump was innocent and made this film to save his life.

40 years ago a group of skilled engineers at Lucas Aerospace UK were faced with crisis, austerity and the threat of their factory closing. They responded with a radical plan, designing numerous socially useful and environmentally sustainable alternatives to the military products their company made. The Plan dares to ask how might our lives be […]

In the summer of 1973, five men and six women embarked on a 101-day scientific sea-adventure, drifting on a small raft across the Atlantic. The project’s aim was to explore the origins of violence and the dynamics of sexual attraction. They were handpicked with the objective of mixing religion, gender and nationality to maximize friction […]

“Setting off for Canada’s east coast, Hoffman joins two friends. (…) They push on to Cape Breton where they find Robert Frank, avatar of Beat romance and adventure, the irascible photographer whose book The Americans undraped a mythic travelogue of brutality and naked encounter. But he appears before them on a distinctly human scale, and […]

The Silence of Others reveals the urgent and ongoing struggle of victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, who continue to seek justice to this day. Filmed over six years, the film follows victims and survivors as they organize the ground-breaking “Argentine Lawsuit” and fight a state-imposed amnesia of crimes against humanity, in a […]

In 2001, the Göttinger Zeitung wrote that Margit (69) had lived a secluded life as an inconspicuous woman. In 2011, the Hamburger Abendblatt stated that Irina (65) had lived in seclusion, a non-descript woman. Both women were invisible, forcefully concealed by their roles as wives and homemakers. Only for a brief moment did they claim […]

Freely expressing his loves and hates, controversial Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo (living in Mexico) breaks with an ingrained literary tradition: that of the omniscient writer who sees and knows everything. The film not only covers his literary output but also his many interests: film, music, science and politics. Made with the full support and participation […]

Film essay about the different definitions of the word “taste” based on interviews with physiologists, semiologists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, ethnologists, art historians, art critics and artists. The question of taste in terms of ethics, aesthetics and cultural and societal codes is analysed in the context of a country deeply invaded by drug trafficking.

The lone musical force behind The Unicorn LP (1974), the first openly gay country psychedelic album, outsider musician Peter Grudzien and his twin schizophrenic sister Terry share their dilapidated home with their father in Queens NY. Peter tests his new compositions at a karaoke bar while Terry sets out on a heart-breaking search for a […]

A TV film crew is shooting in the streets of Cali searching for poor people, bums, whores, street kids, in order to build a mise-en-scene of misery. An action film simulating a documentary about filmmakers who exploit poverty for commercial purposes. A scathing critic with a touch of black humour against “misery porn” and the […]

In 1986, Beckermann was one of the activists trying to prevent the election of Kurt Waldheim. Decades later, she returns to that moment to understand present-day Austria. Former UN Secretary General Waldheim concealed two years of his past during the Nazi regime – he impersonates Austria’s recent history. Session with the presence of Ruth Beckermann. […]

Two young Belgian friends with Dagestan roots return to their native country. Through a staged marriage, they try to avoid the religious masquerade. The virgin marriage perverted in hypocrisy.

An obsessive and acute portrait of men during war time shot in the Donetsk People’s Republic, at the headquarters of a pro-Russian battalion. In a war that’s been going on for 4 years and has lost all meaning, these lost men experience situations between absurdity and tragedy. The everyday gestures turn into abysses in this […]

The European Parliament has awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought since 1988 to individuals and organizations that have made an outstanding contribution to protecting human rights. To mark 30 years of the Sakharov Prize, the European Parliament, together with Magnum Photos, presents a new documentary project profiling four human rights activists from all […]

The European Parliament has awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought since 1988 to individuals and organizations that have made an outstanding contribution to protecting human rights. To mark 30 years of the Sakharov Prize, the European Parliament, together with Magnum Photos, presents a new documentary project profiling four human rights activists from all […]

Alba is twelve years old and wants to discover the mysterious, fascinating and unknown reality of death. With her best friend Samuel, she enters abandoned houses, travels through forgotten villages and explores remote mountains that hide another parallel world. Here is a journey to reveal the unexplainable conflict between the living and the dead.

During his years studying film at UCLA, Yao-Chi Chen directs this short film, which is haunted by the ideas of loss and search for imaginary spaces that only cinema is now able to revive. In a former mining village, Chen finds ruins that may be seen as the memory of an America taken from popular […]

Tickets on sale from October 3 at the central ticket office at Culturgest and Ticketline. The central ticket offices at Culturgest and Cinema São Jorge sell tickets for all Doclisboa sessions. In the case of Cinemateca Portuguesa, Cinemateca Júnior and Cinema Ideal, only until the day prior to the session (on the day of the […]

Para la guerra explores a former Cuban soldier’s memories and loneliness through the observation of his body and his (extra)ordinary gestures. A war film without a single shot being fired, but with one wound, that of this special forces’ veteran searching for survivors among his former commando comrades, 30 years after their last mission.

A young couple of deported Mexicans gets by in Tijuana between resourcefulness and petty theft. The little they earn goes into drugs and slot machines. She was raised in Los Angeles and he spent his life in gangs, which left him with a bullet wound in the head that sometimes affects his memory. But all […]

After the release of the documentary film L’Opéra (2017), film director Jean-Stéphane Bron followed the musical director of the Paris Opera, Philippe Jordan, and the Paris Opera Orchestra during rehearsals for Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 9 whose interpretation is paradoxically based on silence.

Discovering new places with his father in the bay area of Tripoli city, Lebanon, Youssef oscillates between feeling bigger and smaller in space.

The distress calls keep coming in. One has to provide all the necessary information from afar until a medical team arrives. A film on faces, gestures and procedures during a day shift at the 112 medical emergency centre hotline at INEM’s headquarters in Lisbon.

A portrait of a first relationship prior to the outside world, the family one. During a winter in Lisbon, father, mother, son and daughter trace the course of a day. A film that is built around characters whose antagonist is life itself.

The Herens is a breed of cattle essentially raised for tournaments where the winning cow gets the title of “Queen”. Working as a keeper for those cows for four months in the Swiss Alps, Laura gets the following advice from the previous shepherd: she has to be the queen. The advice is taken literally, thus […]

Abandoning a life of petty crime, David strives to fulfil his life-long ambition of becoming a professional fado singer. Together with his best friend Adriano, he starts performing in Lisbon’s fado vadio circuit in order to perfect his craft. Adriano’s strong voice swiftly brings him attention and paid gigs, whilst David struggles. Vadio is a […]

A video art piece that combines citations from the filmmaker’s first films with footage shot in India. It was commissioned by Colombian visual artist José Alejandro Restrepo and took inspiration from A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, by Roland Barthes.

The filmmaker’s father digitises audio-visual material and brings obsolete media back to life. In this environment full of history, the director tries to bridge the distance that has arisen between them over the years because of a traumatic event.

After the screening of Operações de Garantia da Lei e da Ordem, and the series of videos from Keep Shooting, we set out to debate the importance of maintaining these images. Video as an attack and defence tool, as a disruptive element of the power structures.

Athens 2018. 44% of youth is unemployed. Five young non-actors are ‘waiting’ for their ‘adulthood’. They represent their own lives yet are captured in a fictional plot. They yearn to forget their idle futures while fooling around in luxurious Airbnb rentals.

The section that premieres, out of competition, the latest films from key documentary filmmakers, will bring us a selection of 21 films that showcase the world today and the direct us towards its future. Not to be missed titles include the Cannes selected Dead Souls, by Wang Bing and Želimir Žilnik’s The Most Beautiful Country […]

Immediately after the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, amateur detectives took to the Internet chat rooms to try and find the culprits. Users on reddit, 4chan and other gathering spots poured over photographs uploaded to the sites, looking for any detail that might point to the guilt of potential suspects. Using texts and jpegs […]

An old man lives in a small village in the north of Montenegro. He is troubled by the story of his father, which he heard when he was a boy. At the end of WWII, an Italian officer called Mazzola was captured by the partisans, and soon after shot and buried close to the old […]

Vivienne Westwood is punk rock’s Grande Dame, agent provocateur, an eco-conscious activist and one of the most influential originators in recent history. The film explores her uphill struggle to success, looking closely at her artistry, her activism and her cultural significance. Blending archive and newly shot footage, this story is told in Vivienne’s own words, […]

Aurélien, a close friend of the director, is diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. He lives in fragile stability and in constant confrontation. In Quelle folie, he either confronts the camera or is confronted with the crowds that fill the streets of Pamplona during the festival of San Fermín to face the bulls running aimlessly.

We follow a group of friends on their nightly ventures in the city. Guided by their night time excursions into the margins of nightlife and the sounds of the city, the filmmaker touches on the political implications of club-culture throughout its history.

The yoyo was invented in the Philippines. The film takes place in an imaginary village in Bavaria, “Yodelburg”, where one says “yo” as a sign of approval. The weather up on those mountains is ideal for a major enterprise: to create the first Philippine space project by building a spaceship. With surprising dialogue and great […]

Wild Berries is the sensorial journey of a solitary boy immersed into his own world, wandering through fields and forests, going further towards the unknown at every step. Left alone in the desolate rural landscape of Romania, he plays hide and seek among gigantic sunflowers, roams the endless fields, watches the animals around him, finds […]

Dcolisboa inaugurates a partnership with Museu do Neo-Realismo, in Vila Franca de Xira. An extension of three documentaries from the 15th edition of the festival will take part in their annual cinema cycle, Contemporary Realisms:   9 November, 9:00pm I Don’t Belong Here Paulo Abreu / 2017 / Portugal / 75’ I don’t belong here follows the […]

  Project development in dialogue workshop This workshop is intended for projects in writing and editing stage, aiming to establish a dialogue between the different moments of creation and production of a film. — Workshop held in Spanish   Andrés Duque Andrés Duque is a Spanish filmmaker who was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He works […]

Malena is the first transsexual girl of the small island of Apipé, located opposite the powerful hydroelectric plant of Yaciretá. Between them, rocks the river. And tales about the origin of the Earth. Sailing between different stories about the island and the plant, Yasirée Trance invites us to create a new mutant cosmogony. Together with […]

Palme d’Or at Festival de Cannes in 1982 (ex-aequo with Missing, by Costa Gavras), the film was shot by Şerif Gören, long-time assistant of Güney, at the time in prison, and edited in France to where he managed to escape. A tale of a group of released prisoners dealing with military dictatorship in Turkey and […]

“Patient” is the word that defines the state of those who have to follow medical instructions or wait for something. In the labyrinthine world of the Colombian healthcare system patients have to face absurd bureaucratic obstacles. The film was part of the web documentary Paciente, directed by Jorge Caballero Ramos.

A performative, participatory documentary inspired by the breadth and complexity of letters that were sent in the 1970s to the editor of Ms.—America’s first mainstream feminist magazine. Hundreds of strangers from around the U.S. were invited to read aloud and respond to these letters written by women, men and children from diverse backgrounds. Collectively, the […]

A brief black-and-white opener reminds viewers that civilization in Mesopotamia dates back to 3000 BCE, and people still live in floating houses in the Tigris and Euphrates swampland. From this ancient world of reeds and waterfowl (destroyed in large part by Saddam Hussein’s regime), Zaman is forced to take a journey to urban modernity. Amer […]