The director of LEFFEST – NOS Lisboa Film Festival, Paulo Branco, presented today the programme for the festival’s 20th edition, which will take place from 6 to 15 November.
The festival gets off to a powerful start, opening on 6 November with four of the year’s major films: Paper Tiger, by James Gray, at the opening ceremony at Cinema São Jorge; Wild Horse Nine, by Martin McDonagh, the film that will probably earn John Malkovich an Oscar, having already won him the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival, where it screened in Competition, will open Culturgest’s main auditorium; Fjord, by Cristian Mungiu, Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, will open the programme at NOS Vasco da Gama cinema, the new LEFFEST venue this year, extending the festival’s reach to the eastern part of the city; and, at Nimas, Possible Love, by Lee Chang-dong, winner of the Grand Jury Prize in Venice, will open the retrospective dedicated by the festival to the South Korean filmmaker. This will be the only screening of the Netflix-produced film in a cinema. The closing film will be The Debut, by Jesse Eisenberg, starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti.
Over ten days, the Official Competition will present 11 feature films competing for the NOS Grand Prize, awarded by a jury chaired by David Cronenberg and comprising Angélica Liddell, Charles Burnett, Milagros Mumenthaler, Gidon Kremer and Andrea Camprincoli. The selection brings together works from diverse national cinemas, spanning different geographies, sensibilities and ways of looking at the world: established filmmakers such as Steven Soderbergh (The Christophers), Christophe Honoré (Mariage au goût d’orange) and Mario Martone (Scherzetto); filmmakers returning with new works, such as Valeska Grisebach (The Dreamed Adventure), Radu Jude (Le Journal d’une femme de chambre) and Kantemir Balagov (Butterfly Jam); and filmmakers whose work has been gaining recognition on the international scene, such as Sandra Wollner (Everytime), Emmanuel Marre (Notre Salut), Dominga Sotomayor (La perra) and Fernando Eimbcke (Moscas). The selection also includes She Looked Without Seeing Anything, the latest work as a director by Fanny Ardant, produced in Portugal and filmed in the Azores.
The official Out of Competition and Premieres selections feature several titles awarded at major international festivals, as well as many films emerging as leading contenders for nominations at the 2027 Oscars. Among other titles, the festival will present the following films for the first time: Ink, by Danny Boyle; Soudain, by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, which won the Best Actress Award at Cannes, awarded to the film’s two actresses, Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, and is Japan’s submission for the Oscars; El ser querido, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen; Tender Loving Care, Mike Leigh’s latest opus, winner of the Golden Shell for Best Film, the Silver Shell for Best Performance and the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay at the San Sebastián Film Festival; Fatherland, by Paweł Pawlikowski, winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes and Poland’s submission in the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars; Salvation, by Emin Alper, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale; Elsinore, by Simon Stone, winner of the International People’s Choice Award in Toronto; Coward, by Lukas Dhont, which received the Best Actor Award at Cannes, awarded to Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, and is Belgium’s submission for the Oscars; Resurrection, by Bi Gan, winner of the Jury Special Prize at Cannes; Bajañi, by Fernando Trueba; Bunker, by Florian Zeller, starring Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz; Hugo – Victor comme tout le monde, by Pascal Bonitzer; Gentle Monster, by Marie Kreutzer; Ebenezer, by Ti West; A Talent for Murder, by Anton Corbijn; The Samurai and the Prisoner, by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; Seize moments de ma vie, by Albert Serra, starring Ingrid Caven; Sheep in the Box, by Hirokazu Kore-eda; Nagi Notes, by Koji Fukada; Les Rayons et les Ombres, by Xavier Giannoli; and La Vénus Électrique, by Pierre Salvadori. The selection is rounded out by Heysel 85, by Teodora Mihai, and the much-discussed and highly anticipated Musk, by Alex Gibney, and You Can See Everything, by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, both of which are also part of the (i)moralities programme.
The Discoveries section will award the Revelation Prize, decided by a jury chaired by actress Barbara Sukowa, to one of eleven films by young filmmakers and some established directors whose work is not yet known in Portugal and who are therefore important to discover: 9 Temples to Heaven (Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes; Thailand’s submission for the Oscars), by Sompot Chidagsornpongse; Ceniza en la boca (Special Screenings, Cannes; Horizontes Latinos, San Sebastián), by Diego Luna; and Elephants in the Fog (Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, Cannes; Nepal’s submission for the 2027 Oscars), by Abinash Bikram Shah. They are joined by the Iranian film Falling House, by Mohsen Gharaei (Best Actress — Laleh Marzban, Venice Film Festival 2026); Furies (Venice Spotlight, Venice; Lebanon’s submission for the 2027 Oscars), by Rami Kodeigh; and La Maison du vent (Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best Debut Film and Orizzonti Jury Special Prize, Venice Film Festival 2026), by Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu. The selection is completed by Par 4 chemins, by Marie Vermillard, who will attend the festival; The French Teacher (Horizontes Latinos, San Sebastián), by Ricardo Alves Jr., with the director and actress Grace Passô in attendance; Shana (Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes), by Lila Pinell; Siempre soy tu animal materno (Un Certain Regard, Cannes; Best Actress Award, presented to Marina de Tavira, Daniela Marín Navarro and Mariangel Villegas), by Valentina Maurel, who will also attend; and Until the Day Ends (Orizzonti, Venice), by Jelena Maksimovic.
Tributes and Retrospectives
The 20th edition of LEFFEST also brings us a complete retrospective dedicated to Lars von Trier, a filmmaker whose singular body of work unsettles established values and leaves no one indifferent. The premieres of his films became major events. From The Element of Crime (1984) to The House That Jack Built (2018), including Europa (1991), Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998) and Nymphomaniac, in its uncut version, as well as all three seasons of the series The Kingdom — the first season literally brought the streets of Denmark to a standstill at the time it aired on television — alongside his short films and clips, this is the most comprehensive retrospective of the director’s work. For health reasons, LVT cannot travel to the festival, and we have invited some of his long-standing collaborators — actors, cinematographers, editors and screenwriters — to revisit his work.
Kelly Reichardt, a central figure in American independent cinema, has been building a body of work characterised by restraint and resistance, attentive to the margins, to silences and to ways of life that escape dominant representations. From Old Joy (2006) to First Cow (2019), including Wendy & Lucy (2008) and Certain Women (2016), her cinema finds in everyday life and the landscape a different scale of attention to the world.
Lee Chang-dong, one of the leading figures in contemporary South Korean cinema, has built a body of work shaped by desire, grief and social inequality, ranging from the delicacy of Poetry (2010) to the mystery of Burning(2018), alongside Possible Love, his most recent film, presented as a premiere.
The retrospective devoted to Sophie Letourneur offers an opportunity to discover the French director’s irreverent and disarming cinema, attentive to the awkwardness, rhythms and fictions of everyday life, exploring variations on intimate comedy, from La Vie au ranch (2009) and Voyages en Italie (2023) to L’Aventura, her latest film, released in Portugal this year.
The career of Tiago Guedes spans different areas of artistic creation, including cinema, theatre and television, demonstrating a particular attentiveness to the tensions that shape human relationships and social spaces. In Here(2026), an adaptation of J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus trilogy, presented in the Cannes Première section of the Cannes Film Festival, this trajectory finds a new expression.
The tribute to actress Barbara Sukowa, in turn, revisits three outstanding performances by an actress whose presence spans different cinematic traditions: Lola (1981), by Rainer Werner Fassbinder; M. Butterfly (1993), by David Cronenberg (the director and actress will discuss the film together); and Hannah Arendt (2012), by Margarethe von Trotta.
The thematic programme (i)moralities proposes a reflection on the question of morality and a broader perspective on it. The programme includes a film series with filmmakers in attendance, among them Abel Ferrara, Eva Ionesco and Catherine Breillat; premieres (Musk, by Alex Gibney; You Can See Everything, by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim; Heysel 85, by Teodora Mihai); readings (the Marquis de Sade by Catarina Wallenstein, Jean Genet by Béatrice Dalle and Georges Bataille by Angélica Liddell); a live cinema-concert — L’Âge d’or, by Luis Buñuel, with Rodrigo Amado and David Maranha; special events centred on the Seven Deadly Sins; and a listening party for the podcast “Fronteira do Medo”, by the Fumaça collective, followed by a discussion on police violence. In A Morte do Diabo, cinema challenges the boundaries between good and evil, right and wrong, in a programme bringing together provocative works and figures who exist on the margins of established norms and systems, curated by Denis Ruzaev and Ines Branco López.
Memory of Cinema – Restored Films offers an opportunity to revisit four fundamental works, now presented in restored 4K prints: Yesterday Girl (1966), by Alexander Kluge, a landmark of New German Cinema that received the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival; My Brother’s Wedding (1983), by Charles Burnett, a major figure in American independent cinema, who will attend LEFFEST; The Stranger (1945), by Orson Welles; and La Dérive (1964), by Paula Delsol. The presentations of the latter two films, organised in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Française, will be introduced by Frédéric Bonnaud.
The International Meeting of Film Schools brings together students from ESTC in Portugal, INSAS in Belgium and ENAC in Mexico, creating a space for dialogue between different contexts and approaches to film education. In addition to a competition of short films made in an educational setting, which will award the João Milagre Prize, the programme includes free-entry masterclasses devoted to reflection and the sharing of experiences about what it means to learn cinema today.
From 6 to 15 November 2026, LEFFEST will take over the São Jorge, Medeia Nimas and NOS Vasco da Gama cinemas, Culturgest and Teatro do Bairro, transforming the city into a constellation of screening venues, encounters and discoveries. Audiences will have the opportunity to meet filmmakers David Cronenberg, Charles Burnett, Milagros Mumenthaler, Kelly Reichardt, Sophie Letourneur, Christophe Honoré, Florian Zeller, Albert Serra, Tiago Guedes, Fanny Ardant, Mario Martone, Valeska Grisebach, Emmanuel Marre, Valentina Maurel, Marie Vermillard, Abel Ferrara, Catherine Breillat, Pascal Bonitzer, Eva Ionesco, Abel Ferrara and Gabe Klinger; actors and actresses Barbara Sukowa, Stacy Martin, Béatrice Dalle, Jean-Marc Barr and Grace Passô; the writer and theatre director Angélica Liddell; and many others, who will talk to audiences about their films.