This year, the festival's main focus is on the work of Ben Russell, an American filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist whose work lies at the intersection of experimental ethnography and psychedelia, with an extensive body of work that spans cinema, performance, and installation. His works have been featured in some of the most renowned international art centers and film festivals, including Venice, Rotterdam, Locarno, and Berlinale. The last two days of the festival’s program will be almost exclusively dedicated to Ben Russell's work, showcasing a selection of fifteen of his films, including short and feature-length documentaries and experimental films that represent a significant portion of his work over the past twenty years. This selection includes his first feature film, Let Each One Go Where He May (2009), which won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at the IFFR 2010, and his most recent feature, Direct Action (2024), which won the Encounters Grand Prize at Berlinale 2024. In addition to the film screenings, the focus on Russell includes a live performance, Conjuring, and a masterclass titled Again, Time, in which Ben Russell will reflect on his artistic journey and approach to cinematic art. Before the film sessions dedicated to Ben Russell begin, there will be an onstage conversation with the filmmaker, led by Susana Nascimento Duarte. The focus will conclude with a screening of The Invisible Mountain (2021), one of Ben Russell's most personal films, which will also serve as the festival's closing film.
The competitive section retains its usual format, organizing sessions by thematic zones: Lives and Places (focusing on aesthetic approaches to daily life, habitats, and biographies), Memory and Archive (dedicated to temporality and the poetic appropriation of testimonies and found footage), and Connections (centered on relational, interpersonal, and intercultural dynamics). As always, the festival also reserves space for competitive sessions in the genres of fiction and animation. A total of twenty-eight films from seventeen nationalities, including four Portuguese short films, have been selected for competition.
As part of the festival's partnership with the Aesthetics, Politics, Knowledge research group at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto, this year’s program dedicates the usual Private Collection performance cycle to reflecting on the work of Michel Foucault, aligning with the activities organized by the research group to commemorate the forty years since the death of this key figure in contemporary thought. This year’s performance cycle includes works by Sónia Carvalho, Mischa Twitchin, Sara Carinhas, Susana Caló, and Godofredo Pereira (taking place at Casa Comum and the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis), with performances intersecting issues of body and resistance, archive, and heterotopias.
In addition, the festival program includes three masterclasses by invited speakers. In The Site of Shadows, British philosopher Mischa Twitchin (University of London) reflects on the processes of constructing narratives from Holocaust memories. In The Invisible Breath of Cinema, Italian critic and programmer Luciano Barisone discusses cinema as an art form, whose purpose is not so much to inform, but to capture the invisible. French researchers Sophie Raimond and Cristele Taillibert will discuss cinematic experimentalism linked to the appropriation of archival materials and home movies, as part of the collaboration between the Family Film Project and the REC.Forward project (2022-2024).
As in previous years, children and young people will continue to have the workshop Me, in My City, led by Tânia Dinis, an artist and filmmaker who has been present in various forms throughout the festival.
