IndieLisboa 2026 — IndieLisboa

29 APRIL — 09 MAY 2027

INDIELISBOA 2026

Filters

Filters

IndieLisboa 2026

I can see Jay there

I first met Jay at Kanaal40, a bar located in Amsterdam’s Warmoesstraat. I worked behind the bar, Jay worked as a security guard at the door. At the threshold of the club, Jay found a sense of security: a space to express themselves and explore who they want to be. Even after the bar closed its doors, the experience continued to shape Jay’s life in deeply personal ways.

Miguel Domingues

Netherlands / Portugal

2026, 15'

IndieLisboa 2026

I’d love to see you

Four children guide us from the entrance to the visiting room of a prison — a place they go twice a week to see their mom or dad. Prisons aren’t built with children in mind, yet in Belgium, over 16,000 kids have a parent behind bars. I’d love to see you gives a voice to the children of prisoners and shows how they end up in a situation they never chose.

Petronella Van Der Hallen, Sébastien Segers, Zaïde Bil

2025, 12'

IndieLisboa 2026

In the Darkness of the Night – Director’s Cut

Free Admission. Tickets can be collected on the day (Culturgest, from 6.30 pm). Maximum of two tickets per person A roadside strip club run by an entire family — and, as always in João Canijo’s cinema, a family with more beneath the surface than it first appears. It is time to return to In the Darkness of the Night (2004), one of his most significant works, presented here in the director’s cut — in essence, the film’s original version, running 17 minutes longer than the one premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. A tribute screening dedicated to one of the masters of national cinema, who passed away this past January.

2004, 112'

Mockumentary Retrospective

IndieLisboa 2026

Incident by a bank

June 2006, Stockholm. Two men enter a bank wearing helmets and carrying weapons. It was this event that Ruben Östlund, the multi-award-winning Swedish filmmaker, drew upon for this short film, which would go on to win the Golden Bear at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. The film reconstructs a failed bank robbery, shot in a single take and choreographing more than ninety participants.

2010, 12'

Mouth of Madness

IndieLisboa 2026

Index

Radu Muntean, one of the most distinctive voices of the Romanian New Wave, returns with his latest short film. In a remote forest, an ornithologist gathers material for his research. While reviewing the footage from his cameras, he comes across a feral child. What now? Shall we play hide-and-seek?

2025, 28'

Mouth of Madness

IndieLisboa 2026

Interface

Fallen, seemingly unconscious, a man goes unnoticed on a busy street. An insect crawls into his head, and drowsiness quickly disappears. He is now a man seized by terror, turned inside out by his own fears. After Howling (Best Short Fiction Film Award at IndieLisboa 2023), Japanese filmmaker Aya Kawozoe returns to the festival.

2025, 13'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Intersecting Memory

Old videotapes reveal what memory has made impossible to forget: Shayma’ Awawdeh was six years old when the Second Intifada erupted in Hebron, Palestine. Children play atop tanks and rubble as we hear Shayma’s voice, speaking to her mother.

Shayma' Awawdeh

France / Palestine

2025, 20'

Mockumentary Retrospective

IndieLisboa 2026

Isle of Flowers

A tomato — a simple tomato — from the moment it is planted until it rots. Winner of the Silver Bear at the 1990 Berlinale, this short film by Jorge Furtado is one of the most significant Brazilian films of the twentieth century. Charged with acidity and irony, the filmmaker exposes consumer society and its inequalities.

1989, 13'

European Short Film Network

IndieLisboa 2026

it’s not the sun who is moving

Free admission. Luis Macías’ spatial metaphors It’s not the sun who is movingLuis Macías6 x 16 mm film projector installation, colour, loop2026 The installation It’s not the sun who is moving proposes an abstract contemplation, where the immobile reveals its own invisible choreography. A dissonance arises between the illusion of what we perceive as constant and what is really changing. Motionless… we gaze upon the suns. What is yet to come? This immersive, multi-room installation, in which film projections of the sunrise, sunset and full moon footage recorded through a system that rotates image by 360° unfold across three spaces, invites the audience to move freely among them and engage in an immediate relationship with the celestial bodies over the course of a single day. — At a time when watching films (and series) has become a solitary habit shaped by streaming platforms and an exhausting abundance of choice, many of us nonetheless find a consolation from the weight of everyday life in this lone, convenient, screen-bound ritual. Therefore, it is not surprising that expanded cinema live performances are often audiences’ favourite once they get themselves exposed to this shared, in-person experience that transforms viewing from a flexible act, prone to distraction, into a spatial, collective and engaging one. Emerging in the 1960s alongside experimental film and performance art, between intermediality and media convergence, expanded cinema practices continue to be on the forefront of the novel audiovisual expressions, evoking unexpected emotional responses and creating memorable impressions. This uniqueness is the result of the real-time blend of technique and creativity, a kind of a skilful exchange with the machine: devices become instruments, the filmstrip or pixel a material, the audience and performer(s) together with space active parts of the work, offering a form of art that is ephemeral and unrepeatable. This performance is part of a series of six analog live performances by Luis Macías, presented across the member festivals of the European Short Film Network throughout 2026. The project is realised in cooperation with THIS IS SHORT and curated with the support of 25 FPS Festival. An expanded cinema installation with free admission, to see at Palácio Sinel de Cordes in collaboration with Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa during the first day of Open House Lisboa.

2026, 480'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Ivar

In Ivar, the debut film by Norwegian filmmaker Markus Tangre, puppets are placed within a framework of everyday social realism. Anne notices a sudden change in her husband’s scent, and the night turns into a moment of self-questioning.

2026, 4'

IndieLisboa 2026

Join

A film about the joy of community and creating together. As performed by ducks.

2024, 3'

National Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Kiss And Be Friends

In modern-day Lisbon, two art students drift through a weekend of escapism and late-capitalist burnout. Sofia and Amandine’s toxic friendship is put to the test when Amandine crosses paths with Guilherme, a pretentious artist, at an independent exhibition. Kiss and Be Friends is an acerbic comedy exploring intimacy, identity, and a generation driven by irony, anxiety, and Instagram.

Ana Baldini, Roly Witherow

2026, 86'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Kontrewers

In a Polish folktale, a young possessed woman has lived for centuries inside the mysterious Kontrewers Stone. Zuza Banasińska — who presented work at IndieLisboa in 2024 — draws on this ghostly figure to set fiction and reality simmering in the same pot. Her 102-year-old grandmother, confined to her bedroom and gently waving toward death, encounters — and becomes enchanted by — the relic (or by the haunting presence that inhabits it), in a lucid affirmation that communication is far more than words.

Zuza Banasińska

Netherlands / Poland / France

2026, 21'

Mockumentary Retrospective

IndieLisboa 2026

Land Without Bread

Located between Salamanca and the Portuguese border, in a harsh and mountainous landscape, lie Las Hurdes — a kind of village-from-nowhere, a place where misery and aridity are briefly interrupted by the arrival of a film crew. Luis Buñuel’s third film, based on an ethnographic study by Maurice Legendre and shot just a few years before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, portrays the traditions and resilience of a people living in an unforgiving land.

1933, 29'

Mockumentary Retrospective

IndieLisboa 2026

Last Days of Emanuel Raposo

Whether we classify it as a mockumentary or a pseudo-documentary short, this movie is a fun journey through the last days on the job of the presenter of the Azorean television variety program “Meia Hora com Emanuel Raposo”.

2021, 47'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes

António and Jota return from the front with their friends, looking for an ancient Roman thermal bath. They joke with each other recounting past tactical glories. The baths have appeared after a long time spent under the water of a reservoir, and people of all ages curious about the discovery come to spend the day. But there is something mysterious about these thermal waters — as if the baths influence the mood of the men, giving them the courage to say things they have never told anyone.

Gabriel Azorín

Spain / Portugal

2025, 112'

International Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Last Tropics

The sea is ailing. It is unclear whether this is a recent affliction or the accumulated toll of decades of human exploitation. Three desperate, forgotten fishermen turn to dynamite fishing as their cure. A catastrophe in every sense of the word.

Thanasis Trouboukis

2025, 20'

IndieLisboa 2026

Lena’s Farm: Dreaming of Flight

The hen is supposed to lay eggs, just like the other chickens. But the swallows in the air have awakened a completely different longing in him: she wants to fly!

Croatia / Germany

2025, 5'

IndieLisboa 2026

Lena’s Farm: Full Nest

The squirrel’s nest is warmly padded for the cold winter with all kinds of stolen goods. But then a flood breaks out and forest animals flee to Lena’s farm. The squirrel would like to help them…

Croatia / Germany

2025, 6'

Mouth of Madness

IndieLisboa 2026

Life of the Organoid

On a dimly lit plain, where life is scarce, the Organoid spends its days in a simple existence. At a certain moment, it begins to sense a threatening presence around it. It decides to flee and the confrontation happens.

2025, 4'

Cinema at the Pool

IndieLisboa 2026

Link

Things cannot always go our way. Two characters connected by their hair explore the world around them. As they come to accept that they may want different things, the strand of hair stretching between them grows longer.

2017, 8'

IndieLisboa 2026

Long Long Ago

At the edge of time, in an unknown realm, a primitive man comes face to face with a creature from outer space. A most singular intertemporal encounter.

2025, 7'

Director’s Cut

IndieLisboa 2026

Look, She Has Her Eyes Wide Open

In the 1970s, the MLAC (Mouvement pour la libération de l’avortement et de la contraception) was a key organization in the fight for the right to abortion and contraception. Filmed over several years, the film follows several women in a non-hospital setting, offering a portrait of remarkable intimacy and profound collective historical significance. This screening marks the international premiere of a new digital restoration presenting, for the first time, the film’s full-length version of this militant work.

1979, 114'

National Competition

IndieLisboa 2026

Loose Sleep

Sometimes, the hardest step in a day is the first one. In Loose Sleep, our hero fights a battle against himself: is it worth it to leave the comfort of the duvet and live life outside? By means of a fragmentary narrative, built on dreams and associations, this short film follows the protagonist’s speculation on activity and passivity, the passage of time and the (dis)advantages of being awake.

Rodrigo Soares Teixeira

Portugal / Spain

2026, 7'