Guerrilha no Asfalto, by Edgar Pêra, will open the 24th edition of Doclisboa, taking place from 15 to 25 October. Based on Manuel Ricardo Sousa’s book of the same name, Pêra brings together the accounts of a former FP-25 operative and his own memories of the 1980s, combining archive material, fiction and artificial intelligence.
Ahead of the announcement of the Portuguese Competition, Doclisboa also unveils new Portuguese productions from the New Visions and Heart Beat sections, spanning history, music, literature, thought and memory.
In New Vision, Amílcar, by Miguel Eek, approaches Amílcar Cabral through his writings, letters and archival material; Casa do Artista — Não é Permitido Envelhecer, by Solveig Nordlund, enters the everyday life of Lisbon’s Casa do Artista; and Our Last Movie About Lisbon, by the Left Hand Rotation collective, reflects on the traces left by struggles lived in the city and the possibility of imagining another Lisbon.
The section also presents Our Secret, by Grace Passô, a Portuguese-Brazilian co-production about a family dealing with grief; Traces, by Luís Mendonça, which brings together photographs taken by experts from the Portuguese Criminal Police with an investigation into a forgotten film noir; and Ala-Arriba!, by José Leitão de Barros, presented in a newly digitised and restored copy by the Cinemateca Portuguesa in the year marking the 130th anniversary of the filmmaker’s birth.
In Heart Beat, music takes centre stage in The Sailor ‘s Life, by Paulo Miguel Antunes, about the life and musical journey of João Aguardela; Nha Balila – Dentu d’Algem, by Inês T. Alves and André Xina, which follows Nha Balila, a living legend of Cape Verdean Batuku; and Neste Quarto, by Ana Rocha de Sousa, which takes fado and the voice of Carminho on a journey through a Japan.
Literature and philosphy run through O Filme do Meio, by Margarida Gil, featuring Maria Velho da Costa, Armando Silva Carvalho, Luísa Costa Gomes and Fernando Cabral Martins; Letter to José Bragança de Miranda, by Edmundo Cordeiro, a portrait of the philosopher through thought, memory and childhood; and Carta a Uma Jovem Escritora, by Marta Pessoa, which reclaims the place of five unjustly forgotten Portuguese women writers: Olga Gonçalves, Graça Pina de Morais, Maria Cecília Correia, Alice Sampaio and Maria Amélia Neto.
