Boris Nelepo, Hélder Beja, Cíntia Gil
The board of Apordoc has appointed Hélder Beja as the new Director of Doclisboa – International Film Festival, as part of a renewed structure that now includes Boris Nelepo as Co-Head of Programming, with Cíntia Gil continuing in the role of Associate Programmer.
The new Director takes up his position following two years of collaboration with the festival. Hélder Beja is an arts journalist, editor, and screenwriter who co-founded and directed the Macau Literary Festival for seven editions (2012–2018), and has been one of the organisers of the biennial Asia Pacific Writers & Translators conference since 2019. Holding a degree in Communications and a postgrad in Anthropology – Visual Cultures, Hélder Beja has primarily worked on topics related to Asia and China, a continent and country where he lived for nearly a decade.
Boris Nelepo, a programmer and critic who has been part of the Doclisboa team, now takes the role of Co-Head of Programming together with a new member of the programming committee who will be joining the team in April. Previously, Nelepo worked as a consultant for the Locarno International Film Festival (2012–2018). For Doclisboa, he has curated several retrospectives since 2015, including those dedicated to Želimir Žilnik (2015) and Věra Chytilová (2017). His work has been published in renowned international film journals such as Trafic, Cinema Scope, and Cahiers du Cinéma.
Cíntia Gil will join the team in May and will be the Associate Programmer for this year’s edition of the festival. She previously directed Doclisboa from 2012 to 2019 and Sheffield DocFest (UK) between 2020 and 2021. She also co-created the Artistic Differences programme alongside Jenny Miller and Christopher Allen from UnionDocs (USA). Cíntia Gil is a project tutor for the Master’s in Creative Documentary at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and part of the programming team for the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.
Tomás Baltazar and Luca D’Introno continue as members of the selection and programming committee, with Marta Vaz and Nuno Ventura Barbosa now joining the team.
The festival’s new Head of Production is Maria João Malheiro, while Marina Thomé heads the Industry and Development division.
Doclisboa will return to its usual venues from 16 to 26 October. Film submissions for the 23rd edition are open until 31 May.
In October, the whole world fits in Lisbon.
