IndieLisboa 2026 — IndieLisboa

29 APRIL — 09 MAY 2027

INDIELISBOA 2026

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Cinema at the Pool

IndieLisboa 2026

Criss Cross

A baby goat who just wanted a friend. It starts by helping a little bird and they have fun together, until the goat is alone again. A little fox enters the scene and that’s where the true meaning of friendship will be tested.

Nina Rybárová, Tomáš Rybár

Slovakia / Czech Republic

2023, 8'

National Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Crown of Thorns

As real estate speculation intensifies, a small tight-knit community finds itself threatened by hidden interests.

Francisco Moura Relvas

2026, 19'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Cycle of violence: Puppy Please!

Bunny and the viewer are locked in a relationship; yet the bed of roses, the sensual game, quickly drops its mask, unleashing violence that erupts and repeats itself relentlessly. How is an aggressor made?

Felicia Bergström

2024, 6'

IndieLisboa 2026

Dans un Souffle

Dans un Souffle is a breath caught on ice, tracing, figure skater, Nina Pinzarrone’s fragile yet unyielding pursuit of perfection. In black and white, it traces fleeting shapes and expressions, exploring the quiet resilience behind her graceful facade.

Catarina Gonçalves

Belgium / Hungary / Portugal

2025, 15'

Mockumentary Retrospective

IndieLisboa 2026

David Holzman’s Diary

Nothing emerges from nothing. There is always an initial spark, a stubborn impulse that gives rise to a trend. That is precisely the case with David Holzman’s Diary, a 1967 film by a young director who decides to document his daily life and turn that footage into a film — in essence, a proto-YouTuber or TikTok-style influencer. An egocentric and strikingly prophetic satire, and one of the earliest examples of self-referential cinema.

1967, 74'

IndieLisboa 2026

Deep Cobalt

It has always been this way — and it still is: so that some may enjoy their possessions with little effort, others must exhaust themselves producing them. In the Mutoshi mine, in Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo — in the depths of the world — a community of workers known as the Rememberers extracts cobalt, a mineral essential to the manufacture of technological devices, under the most inhumane conditions. And yet, they endure.

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo

Democratic Republic of the Congo / United States

2026, 31'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Detective Smiley and the lost friends

The disappearance of an activist becomes the latest case for the young and enigmatic detective Smiley. Sleeves rolled up, she crosses a less obvious France, tracing the missing man’s footsteps in a lo-fi odyssey about the B-side of a generation — and of a nation.

2025, 30'

Mockumentary Retrospective

IndieLisboa 2026

Dick Johnson Is Dead

Old age always arrives. What we do with it is another matter entirely. Or, in this case, what others do with our old age—something Dick Johnson, a psychiatrist whose health is beginning to fail, might have wondered when his daughter Kirsten asked if she could make a film about his death. In truth, it is more a film about the many ways her father might die: a mockumentary brimming with humour that nevertheless speaks straight to the heart.

Kirsten Johnson

2020, 89'

IndieLisboa 2026

Dog Alone

The true story of a dog abandoned in his own home, at a time when my grandfather was beginning to experience his widowhood and I was returning from London, a place where I felt more alone than ever.

Marta Reis Andrade

Portugal / France

2025, 13'

National Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Dog Day

Maria Joana navigates the discoveries and transformations of adolescence. She experiences her first night of independence at the local Saint John street celebration, testing her limits and confronting her inner fears — but not without consequences.

David Bonneville

2026, 21'

Cinema at the Pool

IndieLisboa 2026

Don’t Blow It Up

Two little girls are playing with a ball. But after a petty quarrel, they get angry with each other and take offense. Their umbrage makes them inflate like balloons, they fly all the way up to the clouds. Girls get stuck up there, with no idea how to get down and save their kitten stuck in the tree.

Alžbeta Mačáková Mišejková

2022, 7'

IndieLisboa 2026

Don’t Look Away

Four film critics, accompanied by the discreet presence of a director, analyse the origins of their cinephilia. The May 3 screening will be followed by a discussion with invited guests after the film.

2026, 68'

Mouth of Madness

IndieLisboa 2026

Dracula

Not only is he one of the central figures of the Romanian New Wave, he is also a long-standing presence at IndieLisboa, where several of his films have already screened — some of them award winners (Aferim!, 2015). This time, the drama follows in the footsteps of Bram Stoker. In the hands of the sharp-witted Radu Jude, Dracula is thrust into the present day, into a Transylvania where bitten necks coexist with workers’ strikes

Romania / Austria / Luxembourg / Brazil

2025, 170'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Dry Leaf

The letter left no room for doubt: Lisa doesn’t want to be found. Her disappearence is also a project —to photograph football fields swallowed by time and overgrown vegetation in rural Georgia. Irakli (her father) and Levani (her best friend) set out to retrace her steps, questioning strangers, animals, and the quiet goalposts along the way. Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze’s third feature is an ultra lo-fi portrait of familial conviction in motion — and of nature’s quiet defiance.

Alexandre Koberidze

Georgia / Germany

2025, 186'

IndieLisboa 2026

Duet

Up the stairway, two movers struggle to carry an enormous piano. Sometimes hardship gives way to discovery.

2025, 1'

IndieLisboa 2026

Eloise’s Summer

In Eloise’s Summer, a nine-year-old girl discovers the world of her curly hair and Cameroonian roots. Eloise is mixed: her mom is Belgian and her dad is from Cameroon. Though her hair can sometimes be challenging and even painful, she learns to love it and explores the endless possibilities of her hair. She captures her summer adventure in a self-drawn book.

2025, 16'

IndieLisboa 2026

Erupcja

Rob (Will Maiden) and Bethany (Charli XCX) are on holiday in Warsaw, and he carries an engagement ring in his pocket. Doubts soon begin to trouble her, as caring and devoted can also mean dull. The impulse is to run away, to chase after Nel (Lena Gorá), an old Polish friend she had lost touch with and with whom she shares an intense chemistry, to the point that both feel that whenever they are together, a volcano erupts. The IndieDate screening on Saturday, 2 May is hosted by Diogo Faro, followed by a post-screening Q&A to break the ice and spark new connections – powered by a quiz you can answer here. Then it’s on to the iconic Message Party at Purex: messages of friendship or flirtation, your call.

United States / Poland

2025, 71'

Director’s Cut

IndieLisboa 2026

Espelho de Carne

As a gift for his wife, Álvaro buys at auction a mirror that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, once belonged to a brothel. He installs it in their bedroom, and it soon becomes clear that anyone reflected in it is suddenly seized by an inexhaustible sexual appetite. Based on a play by the playwright Vicente Pereira, this 1985 classic by Antonio Carlos Fontoura is an exuberant dance of bourgeois moralism. From the director of The Devil Queen (IndieLisboa 2023), the film is presented in a new digital restoration.

Antonio Carlos da Fontoura

1985, 102'

National Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Eternal Flame

Love, cinema and naivety. They meet randomly in the street: João is unemployed, Clara is a cinema production assistant. A boy-meets-girl story where the consummation is cinema itself. The protagonist’s world reflects that of a young generation: an inner world, melancholic, sensitive, naïve, and imaginative. A world that allows a film camera to speak.

Pedro Ramalhete

2025, 72'

IndieLisboa 2026

Everything Else Is Noise

Tere’s house is filled with plants and bathed in a light of its own—an ideal setting for the first televised interview granted by Rosa, the hostess’s friend and a prominent musician. Tere’s daughter, also an artist, joins the pair, and a long, ironic debate on hypocrisy in the art world begins to unfold. Add to this the power outages, the stubborn barking of a neighbour’s dog, and other comic, persistent intrusions, and the result is the perfect recipe for an ode to the everyday as a raw material of rare excellence.

Nicolás Pereda

Mexico / Germany / Canada

2026, 71'

IndieLisboa 2026

Experiences and learning. And parenting.

A lovely kid named “O” is very curious and busy discovering the world around. Despite all the obstacles “O” manages to gather some personal experiences and to gain some new skills. Will they prove useful? A short story told from a child’s perspective. For parents. And little humans.

Malgorzata Rybak

2025, 5'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Fanny at the beach

A single mother, her two children, sun, beach, ice creams, holidays. The games, so close at hand, seem to be unfolding miles away. A deafening silence heralds Fanny’s despair.

Raphaëlle Petit-Gille

2025, 35'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Fiction Contract

Yes, obstetric healthcare is also marked by severe racial inequalities. In Fiction Contract, Carolyn Lazard records a simulated childbirth performed by Jada, a Black mannequin — a staging that is at once perfectly surreal and profoundly necessary

2025, 10'

National Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Filme Pin

Between light, metal and silver, Filme Pin turns a collection of solidarity pins into an archive at another scale, spectres of exile and international struggle against Portugal’s fascist and colonial regime.

Andrés Jurado, Maria Rojas Arias

Colombia / Portugal

2026, 7'