Doclisboa 2025 will take place from October 16 to 26, in the venues that traditionally host the festival — Culturgest, Cinema São Jorge, Cinemateca Portuguesa, and Cinema Ideal. In its 23rd edition, the festival presents a total of 211 films from 54 countries, including 93 feature films and 118 short films. The program also includes 39 world premieres and 31 Portuguese works, offering a comprehensive portrait of contemporary life and its multiple realities and challenges. More than 300 international guests will be present in Lisbon throughout the festival.
The International Competition brings together 12 films, including seven world premieres, three international premieres, one European premiere, and three debut works. The Portuguese Competition will feature 12 titles, including seven world premieres, one European premiere, and four national premieres.
The New Visions section continues to focus on the contemporary nature of cinema, bringing together films produced between 1896 and 2025. The program builds a bridge between early cinematic experiments and more contemporary practices, from the luminous shots and camera movements of Gabriel Veyre, cameraman for the Lumière brothers, to the new films by Hassen Ferhani, Javier Rebollo, Marko Grba Singh, and Margarita Ledo Andión. Egyptian Hala Elkoussy is the guest director, a visual artist turned filmmaker whose work combines an inventive, political, and poetic approach. Her films offer dreamlike worlds, revealing a lucid, formally rich, and deeply human cinema.
Another highlight is Minh Quý Trương, whose multifaceted work reflects his deep connection to Vietnam and its people. Both in his solo works and in collaboration with Nicolas Graux, Trương combines traditions of fiction, non-fiction, ethnography, and science fiction, constructing films of attention and detail, where history, memory, and the materiality of the present time intertwine. This year’s section program also includes Shadowboxing, conceived in a dialogue between Doclisboa associate programmer Cíntia Gil and French programmer and critic Jean-Pierre Rehm. Inspired by the boxing training technique, it proposes an imaginary combat without a counterpart, taking Palestine as its horizon and spiritual, moral, and aesthetic presence.
Some other highlights from the Heart Beat section – Cast of Shadows, by Sami van Ingen, about Flaherty; Andy Kaufman Is Me, by Clay Tweel; Barking in the Dark, by Marie Losier; Bobò, by Pippo Delbono; Paul, by Denis Cotê; Toni, My Father, by Anna Negri; Megadoc, by Mike Figgis, about Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Megalopolis; Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, by Linus O’Brien – and a tribute to Robert Wilson, who passed away this year, with three films: two of his own, Stations and Video 50, and another about one of his theatrical productions, Robert Wilson & the CIVIL warS, by Howard Brookner.
Now in From the Earth to the Moon section, new highlights – Bubaque Fisherman, by Pedro Florêncio; Contemplation Deadlock Attempt, by Welket Bungué; Aurora, by João Vieira Torres; Tales of the Wounded Land, by Abbas Fahdel; Angela’s Diaries. Two Filmmakers: Chapter Three, by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, and Tôsô by Masao Adachi.
Doclisboa and Cinemateca Portuguesa present a retrospective dedicated to William Greaves (1926–2014), a pioneer of African-American documentary and experimental cinema, whose work reflects a deep commitment to social justice, historical memory, and freedom. Co-programmed by academic Scott MacDonald and Luís Mendonça (Portuguese Film Archive), the program will reveal Greaves’ versatility as an actor, director, producer, and editor.
The competitive section Green Years occupies a special place in Doclisboa’s program, revealing new talents and emerging names. The selection brings together cinematic gestures that oscillate between the intimate and the political, where cinema becomes a place of waiting, imagination, and resistance, experimenting with hybrid forms.
A highlight is Nebulae, Doclisboa’s industry space dedicated to the development of independent cinema and the promotion of new collaborations. Through seminars, round tables, development labs, project presentations, round tables, meetings between producers, and networking events, Nebulae brings together professionals from around the world. abcDoc is also back, in partnership with Apordoc’s educational project, committed to promoting education through cinema, with activities for children and young people, focusing mainly on school audiences.
In October, the whole world fits in Lisbon.
