IndieLisboa2024 Awards

We decided to give the award to an urgent and mesmerising film, that portrays the life of communities living in darkness, a strong metaphor for life lived in extreme conditions. A film made with a community within their way of life which becomes the aesthetics of the film. The film bring us closer to people that we rarely pay attention to. Here’s a film that shows what role can cinema play in revealing and expressing the human condition in Congo and Africa. We felt that it’s a very necessary work, and through this award we want to support the vision of the director and encourage him to continue his work as a filmmaker.

We decided to give a special mention to El Auge del Humano 3, for the immersive and singular experience artfully achieved through innovative ways of exploring the group experience between human reality and nature.

The main prize in the international competition program of short films goes to a film that, through unclear and abstract images, hand in hand with ethereal sound, reveals how we treat our mirror image. It reveals not what is good in us but rather the darkest corners of ourselves. The mirror in the form of artificial intelligence becomes more human than its owner and a powerless victim of our selfish whims. The film also questions when the machine really becomes alive. Is it when it reaches a some kind of technical level or when when we humans start to generate emotions towards them. In times when we as humanity fail to recognise the suffering and are denying ourselves the basic empathy that we used to posses, it becomes more and more clear that we need to rethink what we stand for and what we cannot accept.

This immersive narrative disturbs you from the very beginning. We loved the duality – at once creepy and poetic – that gripped us throughout the film. In just ten minutes, we whirlwind an emotional journey.In the first part of the film we feel a strangeness and tension witnessing “weird” scenarios and characters reinforced by the soundscape and color palette. Then suddenly we are immersed in a surprising outcome, leaving our discomfort for empathy, connection, and kindness that makes you smile like crazy.

Many of the films this year grapple with what it means to leave home. This anxiety takes on a specific shape when leaving is a choice. This film occupies the days before such a departure, when the most familiar actions – picking up milk at the shop, drinking a morning coffee with your parents – transform into precious, existential experiences. If you stop and think for too long, you won’t get on the bus, boat or plane. This ambivalence is felt in villages around the world, but in this case, it is a Kabyle village. For articulating this feeling with precision – both the humour and the heartbreak – we give the special jury award to The House is on fire, might as well get warm.

For the gentle perspective of portraits of social bonds in a community facing exodus as a way to survive. For using a simple and straightforward grammar. With no need for camera gymnastics, being faithful to characters and their lives…

The Jury is giving away two awards by unanimous decision.

By honoring a strong tradition in Portuguese cinema, dealing with the sometimes forgotten art of framing, The Jury awards Best Director to Margarida Gil, for “Hands in The Fire”.

Representing a younger generation, and by the fluent sense of rhythm in a story connecting space and time, bridging Portugal and Brasil, The Jury also awards Best Director to Leonardo Mouramateus, for “Greice”.

This is a story from a time when women were almost invisible in portuguese society. Here we are presented not only an ongoing story but also the reactions to what these memories represent. And in this film social class conscience is within the mise en scène.

When everything seems to go wrong, you can get it right. Here nothing and no one is overacting, not even nature itself. We should also mention a sound design that doesn’t do what images can’t. In the end let’s just hope that fortune tellers do not become creative consultants.The Jury gives the New Talent Award to

It’s not easy to frame life in a restricted environment. In a dark room the light of the sun represents lost freedom.With an economy of words, as few as those on a small paper note, this short film welcomes new talent to Portuguese cinema.

A child blessing himself, to avoid suffering the consequences of being late for school. A dog at night who wants to be let off the leash, perhaps in anticipation of what’s to come. In this film, time and space set the different stages of life. The camera flows subtly and intelligently between the settings, and bluntly describes, through the gestures and looks of its characters, in a remarkable mise-en-sc ne, the harshness of our solitary journey. The jury was unanimous in awarding the prize for best film in the Nov ssimos competition to the one that, for us, represents the best proposal of a cinematographic gesture. “Campos Belos” by David Ferreira.

Small places and superstitions, an old marriage in the cinematography of our country, on the border of an entire continent. However, this marriage isn’t always as successful as it is here, in this film that is also about borders, between what we see and what we imagine. For its beauty and respect for collective memory, the jury of the Nov ssimos competition decided to give a special mention to “Tanganhom” by Vitor Covelo.

The jury of Silvestre awards the price to a film that is as wild and free as the name of the section suggests: La Chimera by Alice Rohrwacher. It is the story of a lost man, a drifter and grave robber, whose daydreams conjure up powerful images from history, his own past and memories tied to the stolen objects. The contrast between a spiritual connection and a materialistic pursuit creates a poetic narration and captures beautifully love and death’s essence. If the film is steeped in loss and sadness, it yet manages to convey these themes in a light-hearted way. It is a multifaceted work—part comedy, part adventure, and part drama—that vividly captures the essence of Silvester’s territory. Through exciting discussions, we unanimously selected this film as the most accomplished. It is a work of great freedom, which succeeds in developing a playful and original cinematic language and at the same time being accessible. We enjoyed discovering and talking about all the films in the program and would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the festival team for providing us with this wonderful opportunity.

A dark and daring portrait of teenage angst, generational disparity and political uncertainty; of isolation and conflicting morals, the directors‘ put all these together in a peculiar and unique style, leaving the viewer to play with possible meanings.the escolas das artes award for best short film goes to ‘Zima’ by Kasumi Ozeki and Tomek Popakul

A very curious, playful approach to the power of the moving image in shaping our perception of reality and history (of cinema), the special mention goes to ‚Two wars‘ by Jan Ijas

From the outset, this film impressed the jury with its aesthetics, the beauty of the filming and framing that reveal artistic maturity behind the camera. And the other elements that conquered us, crucial for anyone who makes music, but which here take on another dimension: The search for freedom, the immeasurable strength of the human spirit, the desire to do, create and share with others. Music as an incessant act of courage in a world of continuous obstacles, for many of us invisible, seemingly small nothings, but true arduous mountains that are almost impossible to overcome. Almost! The film shows that with the strength of rock, punk attitude and lots of love, anything is possible.

For the sensitivity and depth with which he addresses the situation of human rights, particularly those of women, in Iran. It is a film that seduces us, as viewers, by exposing the characters’ inner tensions and then confronts us with the characters’ contradictions and fears. In a simple but captivating way, the film transports us to a reality in which suspicion and fear are continually present in every moment of life. With an aggravating factor: censorship is carried out between equals, without even needing the explicit presence of the authorities.

And the winner of the Tree of Life Award is a fiction with a novelistic density that, in the style of Joseph Conrad, shows the African colonies as an inhospitable theater of specters and zombies, between fatal nostalgias and a civilizational malaise with no return.

We give an honorable mention to a documentary that, between an archaeological excavation and an infamous artefact in a museum, tells the story of colonial indignities, helped by an abstract, austere and terrified formal apparatus.

The judges considered that this film reveals a laborious work, made almost solo, in which in a short space of time a complex and daring story is presented with great creativity. It is a film about the possibilities of desire, explored without taboos and with a refined sence of humor, without ever falling into the cliché.

In this film, the director manages to create a state of ease in the relationship between children and the game of cinema, highlighting a beauty sence of “We” that runs throughout the entire film.

An ecological and capitalist collapse that flows into a rhizome of collectivity that resists and exists through the communication technologies of an inter-generational and inter-species ancestrality. In lands ravaged by colonial agribusiness, a queer love so hot, passionate, and deep that it creates a future that heals expansively.

Firstly, we analysed the technical composition of the short film: the editing of the film is well conceived and the editing is well structured given the way they portrayed the oppression of the minorities presented. The acting was essential for connecting with viewers. In addition, the lighting shows the emotions in the scenes which, for example, are complemented by the game of chess and its symbolism. Nevertheless, the lighting shows the coldness of the events in the actors’ expressions and their plasticity. The message conveyed was important to us as judges. This is justified by the theme, given its relevance today. We think it’s all very well realised, the essence has been clearly conveyed.

Nocturne for a Forest is an immersive short film that deserves recognition. The team managed to express a lot about the role of women in the Buçaco forest.

Under the aegis of the uncomfortable place of silence, the plot offers the viewer an interventionist reading of events in São Tomé and Príncipe during the colonial era. Gagged by fear, the characters embody the urgency of developing an oppositional and thought-provoking gaze in the face of a regime monopolized by silence. The viewer, observing the past portrayed in the film, is provided with the necessary tools for the collective construction of an exquisite and transgressive future.

The Universities Jury honours the active participation and dialogue established repeatedly from the beginning to the end of IndieLisboa Festival, fostering new ways of thinking about contemporary cinema. In addition, the Universities Jury feels the need to highlight the participation of members of the academic community in the current socio-political context, regarding the intransigence of their right to actively participate. The National Competition was very fierce, which meant that we were faced with two films worthy of victory. The discourses mobilized in the two plots made it possible for them to cross paths in the challenging field of cinema: the viewer’s gaze. For this reason, our honorable mention goes to the post-colonialist look at the reality of Mozambique: between the precariousness of work in the context of late capitalism, the wounds of colonialism and unfulfilled dreams, Ico Costa’s Gold Songs is rooted in contemporary debate.