With the 23rd edition of Doclisboa approaching, we reveal the opening and closing films, as well as some highlights from the program.
Doclisboa returns from October 16 to 26 and opens with the film With Hasan in Gaza, by Palestinian director Kamal Aljafari, an urgent tribute to the resistance in Gaza. Edited from footage shot in 2001, when the filmmaker and Hasan Elboubou were searching for Abdel Rahim, with whom Kamal was imprisoned in Gaza in 1989 as a teenager, With Hasan in Gaza is a road movie that transports us to a territory in resistance, marked by the coexistence between the ordinary lives of its inhabitants and the permanent violence of the occupation. This is a unique film in the work of the director of A Fidai Film (2024), a gesture of vindication of the vitality of images of life in Gaza as a counterpoint and memory in the face of the current genocide of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel.
To conclude, Doclisboa presents The Tree of Knowledge, by Eugène Green. Since The Portuguese Nun (2009), the filmmaker has devoted particular interest to Portugal, which continues in How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (2018) and Lisbon Revisited (2019). Green now returns to the Portuguese capital with a fable about a teenager, an ogre, and a dark pact, in a not-always-veiled critique of how the city has surrendered to tourism. The film is a Portuguese-French co-production between O Som e a Fúria and Le Plein de Super, starring Diogo Dória, Leonor Silveira, João Arrais, Ana Moreira, and Rui Pedro Silva.
In From the Earth to the Moon, a non-competitive program with a selection of works that allow us to see the worlds of yesterday, today, and tomorrow through stories from multiple places and times, is I Only Rest in the Storm – versão integral, by Pedro Pinho, the long version and world premiere of the film awarded at Cannes (Best Actress in the Un Certain Regard section for Cleo Diára). The same section will also feature Remake, by Ross McElwee, who returns to cinema after a 14-year absence, in a film that is both a reflection on his creations and a moving tribute to the life of his son Adrian, a recurring figure in his work, who passed away in 2016. In 2005, Doclisboa presented the most complete retrospective of the American director’s films ever held in Europe and published a brochure with critical texts on his work.
We continue on From Earth to the Moon with Bulakna, by Leonor Noivo, which arrives at Doclisboa after winning the Renaud Victor Award at the last edition of FIDMarseille. The film addresses fundamental issues of our time: profound social inequality in a post-colonial world, while touching on the most intimate depths of human beings—the value of work, the body, and life.
In the Heartbeat section, Memoirs of Teatro da Cornucópia, by Solveig Nordlund, uses archive footage from various shows, from its origins to its closure, to showcase emblematic plays by the company founded by Luis Miguel Cintra and Jorge Silva Melo in 1973. In the same section, Bull’s Heart, by Greek director Eva Stefani, closely follows the preparationsfor choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou’s creation Transverse Orientation and its tour of European theaters.
The press conference to present the complete program for the 23rd edition of Doclisboa is scheduled for September 25 at 11 a.m. at Culturgest.
In October, the whole world fits in Lisbon.
