After last year's experimental concept, which saw the festival get split into six smaller editions across six months in an attempt to deal with the pandemic restrictions and still show films in cinemas, Doclisboa is back to its original, 11-day, live format. It will take place from 21-31 October in its usual locations, including the iconic venues of the Culturgest, Cinema São Jorge and Cinemateca Portuguesa.

The gathering will present a programme consisting of 249 films – 51 world and 28 international premieres – composed of competitive and non-competitive sections: the International Competition, National Competition, New Visions, From the Earth to the Moon, Heart Beat, Ulrike Ottinger Retrospective, Cecilia Mangini Retrospective, Cinema of Urgency, Green Years and Doc Alliance.

There are 13 films from 14 different territories in the International Competition, most of which are world premieres. These pictures of varying genres and running times feature a diverse range of forms and aesthetics, and question many different aspects of the world. There are ten feature-length films in the selection: Arantza Santesteban's 918 Nights [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película] (Spain), Thiago B Mendonça's Short Journeys into the Night (Brazil), Thunska Pansittivorakul and Phassarawin Kulsomboon's Danse Macabre (Thailand/Germany), Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval's Let's Say Revolution (France), Aline Lata and Helena Wolfenson's The Safest Place in the World (Brazil), Eva Neymann's Pryvoz (Ukraine), Mengqi Zhang's Self-Portrait: Fairy Tale in 47KM (China), Vadim Kostrov's Winter (Russia), and Sebastian Mihăilescu's You Are Ceausescu to Me [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película] (Romania). Two medium-length titles, Clément Abbey's Public Library (Belgium/France) and Aïssata Ouarma's Stay Up (Burkina Faso/South Africa), and two shorts, Baya Medhaffar's Festina Lente (Tunisia/France) and Roberto Santaguida's Avenuers (ep.3) (Canada), round off the line-up.

Of the 46 Portuguese films partaking in this year's edition, 11 are in the Portuguese Competition and seven are world premieres, including Pedro Figueiredo Neto and Ricardo Falcão's Yoon and Tiago Afonso's Distopia. For the full list, please click here.

Doclisboa and Apordoc's project-development lab, Arché, will take place on site during the festival's Nebulae industry programme. This year, 109 projects from 18 Ibero-American countries and Italy have applied, and 12 were selected, all at different stages of production, hailing from seven countries. RAW - Residencies Arché→Work is also back to its on-site format, with artistic residencies and a training programme in which three of the selected projects and three research projects will be participating. For the full list, please scroll down.

The festival will open on 21 October with Marta Popivoda's Heart of Sarajevo winner Landscapes of Resistance [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Marta Popivoda
ficha de la película] and Brazilian director Sergio Silva's short The Earth Is Still Blue When I Get Off Work, and will close on 31 October with Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis's Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title The Tale of King Crab [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Alessio Rigo de Righi y Ma…
ficha de la película].

Here is the full list of Arché projects:

All the Roses - Ana Mariz (Portugal)
Handycam - Francisco Bouzas (Argentina)
In Nature’s Spite - João Pedro Amorim (Portugal)
Orlando Furioso - Rafael Ramirez (Cuba/Ecuador)
The Brazilwood Women - Thais de Almeida Prado (Brazil)
The Idiom of the Ruin by Ana Rodriguez León (Spain)
Swing and Sway - Adriana Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa (Brazil/USA)
Ultimate Bliss - Miguel de Jesus (Portugal/Australia/Qatar)
Under the Flag, the Sun - Juan José Pereira (Paraguay/Argentina)

The film projects participating in the RAW programme are:

Astarsa - Alex Piperno (Uruguay)
BEA VII - Natalia Garayalde (Argentina)
Men and Days - Arnau Vilaró (Spain)

The research projects participating in the RAW programme are:

"Characters in Interrogation" - Francisco Miguez (Brazil)
"Two or Three Things I Know About Joseph" - Adrián Garcia Prado (Spain)
"Video-letters as a Collective Experience" - Bibiana Rojas (Colombia)