Porto/Post/Doc has announced key strands for its 2025 edition, running 20–29 November in Porto. The programme foregrounds mobility, memory, and archives through a new thematic cycle, «The Time of a Journey,» and a twin focus on filmmakers #Lina Soualem# and #Andrei Ujică#, both slated to attend for introductions and masterclasses.
Extending the festival’s three-year framework «The Movement of People» (launched in 2024 with Europe Does Not Exist, I’ve Been There and concluding in 2026 with The Country of Others), «The Time of a Journey» approaches travel not as a narrative device but as a structural condition of contemporary life. The selection positions cinema as a «place of passage and encounter,» examining displacement amid conflict, oppression, and resistance.
Five titles anchor the cycle across geographies and modes. Trains (Maciej Drygas, Poland, 2024) uses archival material to track the ambivalent symbolism of railways—escape, deportation, and war—across the 20th century. Midnight Traveler (Hassan Fazili, USA, Qatar, 2019) documents an Afghan family’s multi-country flight from persecution via mobile phone footage. Yol – The Full Version (Yılmaz Güney, Şerif Gören, Switzerland, 1982/2022) screens in its restored, complete form, revisiting a landmark of Turkish political cinema. Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (Werner Herzog, UK, 2019) reflects on nomadism, friendship, and cultural erosion. 143 Sahara Street (Hassen Ferhani, Algeria, France, Qatar, 2019) observes a desert teahouse where brief encounters sketch a portrait of human movement. The strand invites audiences to reconsider travel as rule rather than exception, challenging fixed maps and rigid notions of belonging.
In parallel, the festival presents Focus Lina Soualem, surveying the Paris-born Franco-Algerian-Palestinian filmmaker’s work on family histories, colonial legacies, and identity. The programme includes her features Their Algeria (2020) and Bye Bye Tiberias (2023), alongside a carte blanche of related works (including films by Jumana Manna, Meriem Bennani, Larissa Sansour, and others), an episode from the series Oussekine (for which Soualem served as script editor), and the curated section La Cinémathèque idéale des banlieues du monde.
Focus #Andrei Ujică# offers a full retrospective of the Romanian director’s investigations into media, power, and historical memory. Titles include Videograms of a Revolution (1992, co-directed with Harun Farocki), Out of the Present (1995), The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (2010), Unknown Quantity (2005), 2 Pasolini (2000), and TWST: Things We Said Today (2024). Ujică also provides a carte blanche, featuring My Home Is Copacabana (1965) by Arne Sucksdorff.
