19/04/2016 - The festival, which kicks off on 20 April, includes retrospectives on Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven and French actor-director Vincent Macaigne

Among the nearly 300 titles (encompassing both short and feature-length films) set to be presented at the 13th IndieLisboa (20 April – 1 May 2016), there will be a total of 40 Portuguese titles, retrospectives on Paul Verhoeven and Vincent Macaigne, as well as the return of a number of directors whose previous works formed part of the festival’s previous editions.

One of those returning directors is the USA’s Whit Stillman, whose film Love & Friendship [+see also:
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Q&A: Mia Hansen-Løve
film profile]. Both Stillman and Hansen-Løve had retrospectives dedicated to their careers in 2015.

Portuguese talent is spread across IndieLisboa’s several sections, with the limelight focusing particularly on the four features in the National Competition. I Was in Lisbon and Remembered You is one of them. Director José Barahona, who often explores the frontier between fiction and documentary, has now adapted the book by Luiz Ruffato, which portrays the lives of Brazilian emigrants in the Portuguese capital. Pedro Filipe Marques – an acclaimed local editor whose CV includes contributions to films by Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes – is presenting his essayistic second feature, The Room You Take. Also in competition is Marcelo Felix with Paul and established director Sérgio Tréfaut with Treblinka [+see also:
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A plethora of local emerging directors will also compete in the short-film section. A particularly appealing entry is Batrachian’s Ballad, which earned 23-year-old director Leonor Teles the Golden Bear for Short Film at the latest Berlinale. Other shorts include Gabriel Abrantes’ The Hunchback, Simão Cayatte’s Young Lady and Mónica Lima’s Viktoria.

Still on Portuguese titles, the Special Screening sessions include the local premiere of Ivo Ferreira’s Letters from War [+see also:
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Q&A: Ivo M Ferreira
film profile], João Botelho’s O Cinema, Manoel de Oliveira e Eu [+see also:
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Eleven titles are trying their luck in the International Competition, and the European representatives include Athina Rachel Tsangari’s satire of the macho world Chevalier [+see also:
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IndieLisboa is also organising Lisbontalks, a series of debates taking place in parallel with the screenings, which will focus on a range of topics, such as the increasing importance of TV series and new indie American cinema.