The section opens with Fjord, by Cristian Mungiu, winner of the Palme d’Or and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and selected to represent Romania in the Best International Feature Film category at the 2027 Academy Awards. Also awarded Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, Fatherland, by Paweł Pawlikowski, follows Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika on a journey through Germany in 1949, a country still marked by the devastation of war and the political divisions of the post-war period.
One of the most anticipated titles in the selection, You Can See Everything, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, takes Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the technology company Theranos, as its starting point to examine the construction of public image and the mechanisms of manipulation. Challenging the conventions of documentary filmmaking and blurring the boundaries between reality and performance, the film questions the very possibility of accessing truth through cinema.
Among the most highly awarded titles in the selection is Salvation, by Emin Alper, winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. In a remote village in the Turkish mountains, the return of an exiled clan reignites a land dispute, reviving old hostilities and visions that blur the line between revelation and divine signs. Tender Loving Care, by Mike Leigh, was another major winner at the San Sebastián Film Festival, where it received the Golden Shell for Best Film, the Silver Shell for Best Performance, and the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay. The film follows two friends who move back in together as they navigate the difficulties of everyday life and crises within their family relationships. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the director via videoconference on November 15 at 6 p.m. at Cinema NOS Vasco da Gama.
Family, emotional bonds, and different forms of belonging also run through other films in the program. In Aquí, Tiago Guedes explores the unexpected bond that develops between a man, a child, and a woman, questioning the ties that make a family possible beyond established models. The director will attend the screening on November 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Cinema NOS Vasco da Gama. In Gentle Monster, Marie Kreutzer explores the tensions that persist beneath the promise of a renewed family life in the countryside. The director will attend the screening on November 7 at 6 p.m. at Cinema NOS Vasco da Gama. Meanwhile, Sheep in the Box, by Hirokazu Koreeda, considers the possibility of replacing a deceased child with a humanoid robot created in his likeness, bringing ethical and emotional questions surrounding artificial intelligence into focus.
In All of a Sudden, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi turns to care as both a practice and a way of relating to others. Set in a Paris nursing home, the film follows a director who seeks to transform institutional care through listening. Hamaguchi approaches care not merely as a response to illness, but as a question of how we make ourselves available to another person.
Artistic creation and the relationship between life and representation form another strand of the selection. In Elsinore, Simon Stone revisits the story of actor Ian Charleson, celebrated for his performance as Hamlet at London’s National Theatre, as illness began to shape his life. The director will attend the screening on November 13 at 9 p.m. at Cinema São Jorge. In Hugo, Pascal Bonitzer turns to the figure of Victor Hugo, exploring the connections between literature, creativity, and everyday experience. The director will be present for a post-screening conversation on November 14 at 3:30 p.m. at Cinema Medeia Nimas.
Music and performance take center stage in two works that turn cinema into a meeting point with other art forms. In Bajañí, Fernando Trueba takes Niño Josele’s guitar as a starting point to explore the dialogue between flamenco, jazz, and Brazilian music, bringing together musicians from different traditions, including Caetano Veloso, Ron Carter, Rubén Blades, Kenny Barron, and Marisa Monte. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the director on November 8 at 3:30 p.m. at Cinema Medeia Nimas. In Seize moments de ma vie, Albert Serra documents a performance by Ingrid Caven and the Catalan band Molforts at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, preserving the singularity of an unrepeatable event. The director will attend the screening on November 11 at 9:30 p.m. at Cinema Medeia Nimas.
The program also includes films that critically examine figures of power and the mechanisms through which it operates. In Ink, Danny Boyle traces Rupert Murdoch’s rise and the transformation of the British newspaper The Sun. In Musk, Alex Gibney turns his attention to Elon Musk, one of the most influential and controversial figures in contemporary technological capitalism. In Bunker, Florian Zeller brings the logic of survivalism into the intimate sphere. When an architect agrees to build a survival bunker for a tech billionaire, the commission begins to destabilize his 17-year marriage. With Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, Zeller examines how the fantasies of security and control cultivated by the ultra-wealthy, exposing a world increasingly organized around the anticipation of catastrophe.
Meanwhile, The Samurai and the Prisoner, by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, transports audiences to 16th-century Japan, where a series of crimes disrupts the order of a court. Following in the footsteps of Abel Ferrara and Werner Herzog, Takashi Miike offers a new take on Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo. Set in an urban Japanese landscape, the film draws on the crime thriller genre, extending the programme’s exploration of authority, transgression, and the fragile boundaries between order and violence.
Other titles in the selection include Resurrection, by Bi Gan, recipient of the Jury Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and Coward, by Lukas Dhont, whose lead actors received the Best Actor award at Cannes. The selection also features Wild Horse Nine, by Martin McDonagh, and The Debut, by Jesse Eisenberg, which closes the festival.
Running from November 6 to 15, LEFFEST’s Out of Competition section offers a journey through different ways of questioning the present, bringing together films in which the tensions of intimate life, social transformations, and historical memory intersect with cinema’s formal possibilities. Rather than offering a single, unified portrait of the world, the selection embraces the plurality of perspectives through which cinema seeks to understand human experience and the transformations of society.