29 APRIL — 09 MAY 2027

INDIELISBOA 2026

IndieMusic
IndieLisboa 2026

“Alternative Routes” – Viseu garage’s rock echoes from the 80s and 90s

Alternative Routes is a documentary by Rui Mota Pinto that reveals the musical diversity of a city, celebrating it and expanding its history through textual, sonic, and visual narratives that inspire new generations. It is a portrait of Viseu’s alternative music scene from the 80s and 90s, where musicians, radio broadcasters, programmers, and other music lovers are invited to confront their experiences throughout those decades.
Rui Pinto
Portugal

2026, 92'

Brand New
IndieLisboa 2026

(as)sento

(as)sento is a video that reflects on human presence without showing the body. Through images of seats displaced from their usual context and a subtle sound construction, it evokes human action and impact on the spaces we inhabit. The video creates an atmosphere of suspended time, where suggestion matters more than evidence.
Pedro Domingos
Portugal

2025, 7'

Retrospective
Mockumentary Retrospective
IndieLisboa 2026

[Rec]

The assignment seemed simple: to follow a fire brigade patrol on a night shift. The siren sounds because an elderly woman is locked inside her apartment — and perhaps it should have stayed that way, given her transformation into something far from human. Soon the entire building appears to be heading down the same path, and the camera keeps rolling. A film that proved hugely influential and unexpectedly crossed Spain’s borders.
Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
Spain

2007, 78'

National Competition
IndieLisboa 2026

18 Holes to Paradise

In a drought-stricken Portuguese estate, landowners and servants recount the same story from irreconcilable perspectives, revealing a fractured world on the edge of collapse.
João Nuno Pinto
Portugal / Italy / Argentina

2025, 107'

IndieJúnior
IndieLisboa 2026

A Dog’s Life

When grandma’s dog dies, granddaughter Luna helps with the burial. But what happens when you’re dead and buried underground? Grandma evades the answer, so Luna is tempted to see for herself what’s going on down there.
Sophie Olga de Jong, Sytske Kok
Netherlands

2025, 9'

National Competition
IndieLisboa 2026

A Memoir of Antecipation

In the 60s, Edviges Pisco wrote a diary about her experience as a school teacher in the village of São Brissos, in Alentejo. Inspired by her diaries, the film portrays the present day in the region, where the echoes of the past still resonate.
João Sarantopoulos
Portugal

2025, 21'

IndieJúnior
IndieLisboa 2026

A Pain in the Butt

Just before going into hibernation, the hedgehog realizes that one of his spines is missing, and he treasures them dearly. It turns out to be lodged in Lena’s dog’s bottom, which means the rescue mission is unlikely to be simple.
Elena Walf
Croatia / Germany

2025, 5'

Smart7
IndieLisboa 2026

A River’s Gaze

In an abandoned rural Romania, where most people have emigrated to Germany, the four seasons pass while the river remains by the house. It is a place Lavinia promises to beautify, to make comfortable—we hear her tell Dani, who is 14. A mother who, despite her emotional instability, impulsiveness, awkwardness with feelings and a turbulent relationship with her ex-boyfriend, only wants a better life for her son.
Andreea Cristina Borțun
Romania

2025, 92'

International Competition
IndieLisboa 2026

A Small Fiction of My Mother in Beijing

In the second chapter of the Mommy trilogy, Dorothea Sing Zhang unveils the solitary daily life of her mother, a star of Chinese opera. The mostly silent, echoing backstage spaces become a mirror of the emotional distance between them.
Dorothea Sing Zhang
China

2025, 12'

Silvestre
IndieLisboa 2026

A South Facing Window

For Azaa and Shagai, the search for a new home is little more than a diversion from an impending divorce. Trapped in the infernal traffic of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s bustling capital, their argument comes alive.
Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir
France / Mongolia

2025, 20'

Mockumentary Retrospective
Retrospective
IndieLisboa 2026

A Story for the Modlins

If a box of photographs, letters and VHS tapes hadn’t been found by Sergio Oskman beside a trash container in downtown Madrid, the life and work of the Modlins might have gone unnoticed by the world. Elmer and Margaret devoted their lives to seeking artistic recognition — he as an actor, she as a painter. They eventually ended up in the Spanish capital, withdrawn from society alongside their son, quietly shaping their own story.
Sergio Oskman
Spain

2012, 26'

Brand New
IndieLisboa 2026

Abril, Helena´s daughter

In a new daily life, Abril, a trans woman, chooses her mother Helena as her primary caregiver for a facial feminization surgery. With maternal gestures, Helena cares for Abril with the same gaze she had when her daughter was little.
Maria Moreira, Victor Hugooli
Portugal

2026, 20'

National Competition
IndieLisboa 2026

According to Love

Saura, Filipe, João, Beatriz, Rita, and Marchana have a language of their own, shaped by the growing pains of childhood and the uncertainties of adult life. During the summer, Saura and Filipe, once deeply connected, begin to drift apart. As they try to understand what still remains between them, their language also begins to change, and with it the group of friends they share.
Rodrigo Braz Teixeira
Portugal / France

2026, 71'

Brand New
IndieLisboa 2026

Ace

An ace, a card, a feeling yet to be revealed…
Matilde Dias
Portugal

2025, 7'

Brand New
IndieLisboa 2026

Ala, Ala

In a tradition dating back to the dawn of humanity, Costa da Caparica was born through the Arte-Xávega. Today, a community of fishermen adapts this fishing technique to the modern world, in a choreography between machine, waves, and Man.
João Rebocho
Portugal

2026, 13'

National Competition
IndieLisboa 2026

Alive and Dead

António, an absentee father, is in charge of feeding his daughter’s old cat while she’s on vacation. When the cat doesn’t show up, António convinces himself that something bad might’ve happened as he stumbles on small clues. Do these signs corroborate his beliefs or is António projecting his worst fear, facing death? Cat sitting turned into an existential thriller.
Marco Leão, André Santos
Portugal

2026, 15'

IndieJúnior
IndieLisboa 2026

América

América is a ten-year-old girl living in a remote village in the Andes whose dream is to buy a bicycle so she will never be late for school again.
Javier Arias-Stella
Peru

2025, 16'

Silvestre
IndieLisboa 2026

An Accident

This is the debut solo short film by young Austrian director Angelika Spangel. In An Accident, there’s trouble of every kind: three youths stage a car crash, pigs suffocate, and a fire remains unexplained.
Angelika Spangel
Austria

2025, 30'

Silvestre
IndieLisboa 2026

An Impossible Address

Suneil Sanzgiri’s work has been shaped by an ongoing investigation into the histories of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle in the Global South — rooted in his own family genealogy of resistance in Goa under Portuguese occupation. Here, he writes an impossible letter to Sita Valles, an Angolan doctor of Goan descent who, in the aftermath of April 25, left Lisbon to join the MPLA. A film that unfolds through shifting cinematic techniques and anchors itself in a mutable aesthetic, in an attempt to grapple with what struggle truly means.
Suneil Sanzgiri
Angola / India / United States

2025, 38'

IndieJúnior
IndieLisboa 2026

Ananasi

Did you know that from the top of a pineapple you can grow a new pineapple, and so on, forever? Funny Sri Lankan animal friends grow a pineapple and dance. A bright and colourful reflection on the infinity of nature.
Anna Bawa
Sri Lanka

2025, 4'

International Competition
IndieLisboa 2026

Another Other

Two Black figures — a police officer and a university president — are interrogated by white state officials. At stake is their alleged complicity and collaboration with an oppressive, racist system; ultimately, the plans devised for the institutions they lead have, in the eyes of the State, fallen short. An essay film that probes every corner of its own cinematic language.
Bex Oluwatoyin Thompson
United States

2025, 9'

Silvestre
IndieLisboa 2026

As Night Falls

Those last days of summer break, a window about to close — don’t go, Summer. Outside, charcoal strikes the first notes of the barbecue. Balthazar’s cousins are getting ready for the big night, while his older brother pretends he doesn’t exist. That leaves Tom, the one he texts with — the only one who doesn’t remind him that he is thirteen.
Marion Desseigne Ravel
France

2025, 29'

Rhizome
IndieLisboa 2026

At Work

Like a letter addressed to bittersweet, thorny stability, À pied d’œuvre (winner of Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival) begins with a gesture that has been voiced millions of times: one day I’ll leave everything behind, one day I’ll be free. But this successful photographer takes the phrase literally and sets out in search of his freedom: writing. Paul gives up comfort, embraces precarity, and takes a job on a construction site — a guarantee that he will have the time to devote himself to his next novel.
Valérie Donzelli
France

2025, 92'

Rhizome
IndieLisboa 2026

Auto da Casa

A theatre having national as part of its name, at the top of a square, reflecting a country’s history. But which one? This is a voyage through the various narratives about D. Maria II National Theatre, forged through the intentions of the several regimes that intended to convey their own ideologies within the theatre’s mission. This is also the story of those who fought against it, opposed the institution and became part of it. How can one become heir of these stories, even if never having set foot inside.
Tiago Bartolomeu Costa, Joana Cunha Ferreira
Portugal

2026, 123'

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