The freedom to imagine and the freedom to discover

Doclisboa is about to reach its quarter-century, while Apordoc—the Portuguese documentary association that founded it and continues to organise it—is approaching three decades of activity. These numbers speak less of the past than of the responsibility to imagine the future. A festival like Doclisboa is not measured solely by its longevity, but by its ability to continue providing a platform for restless cinema, to renew the encounter between films and audiences, and to respond to a world in constant transformation without surrendering its identity.

Doclisboa has long ceased to view documentary as a genre or a closed territory. Instead, it has sought to follow—and often anticipate—the ways in which cinema reinvents how we look at and understand the present, embracing works that refuse established boundaries and affirm the power of imagining. This edition was built on the same conviction: the diversity of cinema is inseparable from the diversity of the world. To programme is, therefore, to propose new geographies, new durations and new points of view.

We live in an age of incessant circulation of images, not of greater diversity. The ways in which films are produced, screened and received have changed; attention has become a scarce commodity; and cinemas are losing ground in a landscape dominated by platforms and algorithms. This is also why a festival like this is becoming increasingly important. Doclisboa does not simply screen films: it gives them context, connection and time; it makes programming a critical and, why not?, artistic gesture; it creates community around a collective experience that no other form of distribution can replace. We hold on to the idea that it is still possible to have a film festival centred on cinema itself. In an era in which almost everything is imposed on us as if it were suggested, discovery remains an act of freedom. And there is much to discover here.

This year, we once again strengthen the presence of Portuguese productions and the international dimension of Doclisboa; we remain committed to a singular retrospective, such as the one dedicated to Lino Brocka, and to authorial paths such as those of the New Visions invited artists, Sophie Roger and John Torres; we consolidate an International Competition comprising world, international and European premieres only, but above all of truly beautiful films; and we punctuate the programme with unique moments that we invite everyone to discover in their own way. A few clues: the focus on Palestine, when the genocide—and, for that matter, the culturecide—of a people continues in plain sight; the political perspective of Brazilian filmmaker Miguel Antunes Ramos as he attempts to understand his country in the aftermath of its elections; the tribute to the irreplaceable Angela Ricci Lucchi and Yervant Gianikian; the return of William Greaves a year on; Alain Cavalier’s farewell gesture; and, of course, Edgar Pêra’s guerrilla film opening the programme.

Doclisboa is an arts festival, and much of its strength and belief lies in its defence of art and the cinema theatre, in the power, richness, complexity and even simplicity of the cinematic gesture. We want to help ensure that cinema is shown in Portugal in all its possibilities, free from the formulas that have been imposed on us for decades, from the films that the commercial circuit repeats ad nauseam, and from the canon that by its very nature likes to remain immovable. We also create opportunities for film professionals to come together through Nebulae, its labs, seminars and projects in development. More than simply keeping up with contemporary cinema, we want to continue to be a place where it is possible to discover it, where emerging authors rub shoulders with established filmographies, and where Portuguese cinema engages in dialogue with the rest of the world.

In a world at war, in a country where our freedoms are under threat and democracy itself is under attack, in a daily reality where hate speech, exclusion and far-right rhetoric are becoming the norm, we believe in a festival where curiosity, and the thirst for knowledge, encounter and the debate of ideas remain very much alive. Doclisboa is a festival in motion, a story far from over. It was with this belief in cinema and in the value of images—and in what they continue to allow us to see, think and share—that we imagined yet another edition. Come and discover it with us.

Hélder Beja
Director of Doclisboa