Doclisboa 2025 announces opening/closing films and first program highlights
Written by:
Modern Times Review
The 23rd edition of #Doclisboa runs –26 October.
The festival opens with With Hasan in Gaza, by Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari. Edited from footage shot in 2001—when Aljafari and Hasan Elboubou searched for Abdel Rahim, with whom Aljafari was imprisoned in #Gaza in 1989—the film is presented as a road movie set in a territory under occupation, foregrounding everyday life alongside sustained violence.
The closing film is The Tree of Knowledge by Eugène Green, a Portuguese–French co-production (O Som e a Fúria; Le Plein de Super). Returning to Lisbon after works such as The Portuguese Nun (2009), Green’s new feature is described as a fable about a teenager, an ogre, and a dark pact, with an implicit critique of tourism’s impact on the city. The cast includes Diogo Dória, Leonor Silveira, João Arrais, Ana Moreira, and Rui Pedro Silva.
In the non-competitive program From the Earth to the Moon, Doclisboa will host the world premiere of I Only Rest in the Storm – versão integral by Pedro Pinho, the long version of a film for which Cleo Diára won Best Actress in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.
The same strand includes Remake by Ross McElwee, marking the director’s return to filmmaking after 14 years with a work reflecting on his oeuvre and paying tribute to his late son, Adrian. Doclisboa previously presented the most complete European retrospective of McElwee’s films in 2005.
Also in this section, Bulakna by Leonor Noivo arrives after winning the Renaud Victor Award at #FIDMarseille, addressing social inequality in a post-colonial context alongside questions of labor, the body, and life.
In the Heartbeat section, Memoirs of Teatro da Cornucópia by Solveig Nordlund uses archival material to chart the Lisbon company founded in 1973 by Luís Miguel Cintra and Jorge Silva Melo.
The section also features Bull’s Heart by Greek director Eva Stefani, following the creation and European tour of choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou’s Transverse Orientation.
