The director of LEFFEST — Lisboa Film Festival, Paulo Branco, presented today, in the Archive Room of the Paços do Concelho, the program of the festival’s 19th edition, which will take place from 7 to 16 November in Lisbon. The session was attended by the Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, and the Executive Administrator of NOS, Luís Nascimento.
The opening film will be Father Mother Sister Brother, by Jim Jarmusch, winner of the Golden Lion in Venice.
Over ten days, the Official Competition presents 12 feature films competing for the NOS Grand Prize, which will be awarded by a jury composed of Stacy Martin, Kim Gordon, Rodrigo Moreno, Manuel Martín Cuenca, Francisco Aires Mateus and Mohammad Rasoulof. The selection brings together works from diverse cinematographies: established auteurs such as Richard Linklater (Blue Moon), Ildikó Enyedi (Silent Friend), Hal Hartley (Where to Land, European premiere) and Christian Petzold (Miroirs No. 3); filmmakers long absent from the screen who return with striking new works, such as Cai Shangjun (The Sun Rises on Us All), Fernando Eimbcke (Olmo) and Milagros Mumenthaler (Las corrientes); and new voices who have emerged this year or in recent years, including Anuparna Roy (Songs of Forgotten Trees), Hasan Hadi (The President’s Cake), Alireza Ghasemi and Raha Amirfazli (In the Land of Brothers), and the Portuguese director Pedro Cabeleira (Entroncamento). Also awaiting confirmation is Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due, which Abdellatif Kechiche finally completed this year.
Out of Competition shines with titles that have already fuelled anticipation: Dead Man’s Wire, by Gus Van Sant, who is expected to come to present the film; Hamnet, by Chloé Zhao; The Testament of Ann Lee, which will be accompanied by director Mona Fastvold, along with Brady Corbet and Stacy Martin; Die My Love, by Lynne Ramsay; The Mastermind, by Kelly Reichardt; The Wizard of the Kremlin, by Olivier Assayas, who will accompany the screening; and The Chronology of Water, by Kristen Stewart, who is expected in Lisbon with Kim Gordon. Also included are the Golden Leopard winner in Locarno Two Seasons, Two Strangers; Kontinental ’25, by Radu Jude; The Voice of Hind Rajab, which received around thirty minutes of applause at its Venice premiere; and the three films of the Sex Love Dreams trilogy, by Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud, whose latest instalment won the Golden Bear in Berlin and whose presence is awaited. Among the Portuguese premieres are As Meninas Exemplares, by João Botelho, and Maria Vitória, by Mário Patrocínio, both accompanied by their directors and casts.
The Discoveries section will award the Revelation Prize, decided by a jury composed of Avi Mograbi, Margarida Cardoso, Stephen Kovacevich and Stéphanie Argerich, to one of seven films by authors who have emerged in recent years. Competing are DJ Ahmet, by Georgi M. Unkovski; Homebound, by Neeraj Ghaywan; Living the Land, by Huo Meng; Lucky Lu, by Lloyd Lee Choi; My Father’s Shadow, by Akinola Davies Jr.; Shadowbox, by Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi; and Urchin, by Harris Dickinson.
At LEFFEST there are absolute discoveries, but there is also new cinema from great masters: films that carry within them the brilliance of recognised veteran artistry. In the Great Masters section, audiences will rediscover major names of contemporary cinema with new works: Aleksandr Sokurov (Director’s Diary), Edgar Reitz (Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Painting), Franco Maresco (Un film fatto per Bene), Sharunas Bartas (Laguna) and José Luis Guerín (Historias del buen valle). This selection takes on special significance with the presence in Lisbon of Sokurov, Bartas and Guerín, who will attend the screenings to introduce their films.
The Tributes of this edition open with the first major European retrospective of Hal Hartley, a key figure of American independent cinema, accompanied by the European premiere of his latest film Where to Land. The festival also honours actress Isabel Ruth, an emblematic face of Portuguese Cinema Novo with an unstoppable career that continues to this day; Brazilian actor and director Wagner Moura, recently awarded in Cannes; and British actress Miranda Richardson, whose exceptional career spans four decades. All will be in Lisbon to present their films and participate in encounters with the audience.
Two geographical focuses broaden the horizon: A New Élan in Spanish Cinema brings together seven films never before released in Portugal and showcases the vitality of contemporary Spanish cinema, with filmmakers from different generations reinventing the legacy of the great masters. Among those attending are Manuel Martín Cuenca, Pilar Palomero, Alberto Morais and Javier Rebollo. The focus Cinema of Central Asia presents 12 films from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, spanning from the New Waves of the 1980s to contemporary creations, some introduced by their directors. A kaleidoscope of vast landscapes, multiple identities and singular mystique, where collective solitude and melancholy meet the force of freedom.
In memory, the festival pays tribute to Marisa Paredes, a woman who accompanied the festival from its very first edition and who, in the words of Pedro Almodóvar, “dignified everything.” She will be remembered as an integral actress, muse of Spanish cinema and a luminous presence, through screenings of some of her most important films and the participation of several of her closest collaborators.
Among the thematic programs, Exílios proposes an intimate and political reflection on the condition of displacement, with films, debates, readings, the exhibition At the Edge of Visibility by the Dahaleez collective at Galeria Zé dos Bois, and a cine-concert with The Immigrant (1917) and The Pilgrim (1923), by Charlie Chaplin, performed live by the Rodrigo Amado Trio. In Revoluções, cinema looks at history as a transformative force, in a program curated by Denis Ruzaev and Ines Branco López.
The program also includes a Tribute to Arvo Pärt on his 90th birthday. One of the greatest living contemporary composers and one of the most performed, Arvo Pärt’s influence extends far beyond classical music. The festival celebrates him with a concert by the GGG Trio (Gidon Kremer – violin, Georgijs Osokins – piano, Giedre Dirvanauskaite – cello), conversations on his work and screenings of films, including his collaboration with Robert Wilson.
LEFFEST once again brings three great recently restored films: Senso (1954), by Luchino Visconti, restored by the Cineteca di Bologna; La Règle du Jeu (1939), by Jean Renoir, restored by the Cinémathèque Française; and O Processo do Rei (1990), by João Mário Grilo, which will have its first public screening in a newly restored copy by the Cinemateca Portuguesa.
From 7 to 16 November 2025, LEFFEST will spread across Cinema São Jorge, Cinema Medeia Nimas, Culturgest, Teatro do Bairro, Auditório dos Recreios da Amadora, Cineteatro D. João V, Galeria Zé dos Bois and NOS Amoreiras, transforming the city into a constellation of theatres, encounters and revelations.