Returning to its usual venues, Cinema São Jorge and Cinemateca Portuguesa, between 19 and 27 September, the Queer Lisboa 29 programme is inevitably a mirror of today's troubled world, while also recalling the many stories of overcoming adversity and the lessons of queer culture's recent past. In a present that seems to refuse to learn from the past, insisting on repeating the same mistakes, the festival proposes to celebrate this memory, alongside the presentation of narratives of bond-building, community and resistance.

 

In a particularly robust and diverse year for queer cinema, the programme features some of the most celebrated titles on the international festival circuit, arriving from Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and Locarno, as well as many other films premiering in Portugal and waiting to be discovered. This is a cinema sometimes perplexed by what it sees around it, which speaks of the growing expressions of transphobia, the moralistic management of migrants in Europe, the heinous genocide in Palestine, the public discourse dominated by conservatism, authoritarian regimes, sexual abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church, but also queer activism – apparently perpetually necessary – stories of freedom and sexual and identity reconstruction, of subcultures that allow themselves to reinvent normality for themselves, and bonds of love, friendship, and family that dare to dream, support, and overcome everything.

 

With films from such diverse cinematographies as Australia, South Korea, India, Cuba, Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, and Georgia, Queer Lisboa remains committed to celebrating the inventiveness of this cinema, presenting works that bring about true narrative and aesthetic revolutions, but also titles with an informative and celebratory mission for queer culture, so important to discover, or rediscover, time and time again. There are 104 films in total, with a notable presence of Brazilian, Spanish, Latin American (Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Cuba), Asian (India, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, South Korea), and, of course, Portuguese cinema, with the world premiere of two documentaries, the national premiere of a Brazilian feature film co-produced with Portugal, and the Lisbon premiere of three short films or Portuguese production or coproduction. Filmmakers from Spain, Brazil, France, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Canada and Chile will be in Lisbon to present their films. Of the 112 filmmakers, 54% are cisgender men, 30% are cisgender women, 16% are transgender or non-binary, and 40% are BIPOC filmmakers.

 

In addition to the titles and activities announced in recent weeks – the retrospective dedicated to the recently deceased French militant filmmaker Lionel Soukaz, in collaboration with the Cinemateca Portuguesa, the Panorama section, the Queer Focus dedicated to trans cinema, the titles in the newly created Queer Resistance section, the opening and closing films, and two special sessions – are now joined by the films that make up the festival's five official competitions, the announcement of the talks, the presence of official guests, and the disclosure of parallel activities: the parties and an exhibition at Cinema São Jorge.

 

The jury for the Feature Film Competition consists of filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos, cultural manager Francisca Carneiro Fernandes, and programmer and distributor Gustavo Scofano. Together, the eight films in the section, made by emerging filmmakers with diverse profiles, backgrounds, aesthetic affiliations, and narratives, take the pulse of the current spectrum of queer cinema and inevitably visit the fertile territories of love and family. Winner of this year’s Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Competition, Cactus Pears, by Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, shines in the intimate dialogues it builds between two male friends in a village in rural India. Love is also the subject of Jone, Sometimes, the first feature by Spanish director Sara Fantova, a portrait of a young protagonist whose summer is divided between her responsibilities as her father's carer and her first adult love. From the parallel section ACID Cannes comes Drifting Laurent, by the trio Anton Balekdjian, Léo Couture and Mattéo Eustachon, a humorous and moving film, a tribute to social maladjustment, set in a ski resort, with a delightful performance by Béatrice Dalle. Lesbian Space Princess, by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, winner of this year's Teddy Award, is a science fiction animated comedy about an introverted space princess on an intergalactic mission to save her ex-girlfriend — a space movie that is as much a parody as it is heartwarming. Four more titles complete this section, with a prize of €1,000.

 

The Documentary Competition is judged by filmmaker and producer Marta Sousa Ribeiro, visual artist and researcher ROD, and RTP journalist Silvia Alves. This year, the section focuses on portraits: of people, some well-known, some less so, and of places, some remote, some less so, taking the pulse of the diversity and richness of queer existence. Among the highlights is the presence of Jérôme Clément-Wilz, who returns to the festival with his most sincere and brutal work: in This Is My Body, the intimate becomes political to address sexual and moral abuse in the Catholic Church. Edhi Alice, directed by Ilrhan Kim, is a skilful double portrait of two South Korean trans women at different stages of their gender affirmation, and a conscious reflection on how documentaries about trans people are made. In My Sweet Child, Maarten de Schutter reconstructs the footage he has of his mother, an HIV/AIDS activist who died in a plane shot down by Russia: cinema as salvation, memory as belonging, in a documentary destined to win hearts. From Lebanon comes Tripoli / A Tale of Three Cities, by Raed Rafei, who returns to his hometown of Tripoli to construct a portrait of its people – their beliefs and prejudices – resulting in a precious object about the possibility of acceptance, progress and happiness. The eight films are competing for the best documentary award, sponsored by RTP2, for the acquisition of the film's screening rights, worth €3,000. 

 

Twenty titles make up the Short Film Competition, whose jury includes artist Diego Bragà, filmmaker Francisca Manuel and actor and cultural journalist Tiago Manaia. From a wide variety of geographies, we are presented with artistic expressions that question and tell us what it means to be queer, always from a place of curiosity or love. Returning to the festival are Hao Zhou (Correct Me If I'm Wrong), Lazare Lazarus (Ghosts of Hard, chapter 2), Violette Delvoye (The Mud Under My Window) and Alba Cros (Ferides). Worth highlighting too is the Lisbon premiere of Neko, by Inês Oliveira, the only Portuguese title in this competition, about an initiatory trans experience lived within a group of teenagers in a gentrified Lisbon. The competition also features the latest films by Agustina Comedi, with the duo Chiachio & Giannone (We Were No Desert), Valentin Noujaïm (Oceania), Luke Fowler (Being Blue) and Lesley Loksi Chan, whose short Lloyd Wong, Unfinished won both the Golden Bear and the Teddy Award at the last Berlinale. In addition to the €500 prize for best film, sponsored by the Contranatura sex shop, this year sees the introduction of a new second prize, sponsored by AltContent, for music supervision consultancy and use of its music catalogue in a future project.

 

The In My Shorts Competition (European School Films), which will be judged by the same jury as the short films, features works from DFFB (Berlin), ESCAC (Barcelona), EZEQ (San Sebastián), Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Potsdam), KASK & Conservatorium / School of Arts Gent (Ghent), La Fémis (Paris), Le Fresnoy (Tourcoing) and Université Bordeaux Montaigne (Pessac). In total, ten films compete, with the return of two names: Spain's Lucía G. Romero (last year's winner in this same section), with Close to September, a lesbian teenage romance set in the summer in the tradition of social realism, and Rezbotanik, by Pedro Gonçalves Ribeiro, a Brazilian filmmaker based in Lisbon, with a lysergic portrait of Brazilian performer Rezmorah filmed in the Príncipe Real Botanical Garden. Also noteworthy is Icebergs, by Berlin-based Portuguese filmmaker Carlos Pereira, a film about emptiness and numbness, with a static and desolate beauty, and Erogenesis, by Xandra Popescu, still fresh from winning the Canal+ short film award at Cannes Critics' Week, a scientific dystopia halfway between Yorgos Lanthimos and Margaret Atwood. The prize for best film is worth €500.

 

Finally, this year's Queer Art competition, comprising fiction, documentaries and hybrids, is judged by actor, performer and singer Bruno Huca, visual artist Luisa Cunha and filmmaker Stéphane Gérard. The works presented, formally more or less misaligned, test the limits of society, of the freedom of social reinvention that the margins offer, and speak of the role of communities, intimacy, desire and acceptance in such process. Highlights include: Holy Electricity, winner of the Golden Leopard at the Concorso Cineasti del Presente at the 2024 Locarno festival, about two cousins who transform scrap metal into neon crucifixes, in a portrait of today's Tbilisi, delivered by Tato Kotetishvili with equal measures of humour and delicacy; Museum of the Night, which traces Argentine artist and filmmaker Leandro Katz's immersion in the Teatro del Ridículo, part of the queer scene in 1960s New York, a moment that Fermín Eloy Acosta reconstructs through Katz's experimental films of the time – contemporaries of those by Mekas, Smith, Warhol and Jacobs; Sirens Call, by German artist duo Miriam Gossing and Lina Sieckmann, which offers a very unique road movie immersed in the merfolk subculture of the USA, communities that claim the mythological hybrid form of the mermaid as a mode of belonging and activism; and Truth or Dare, an investigation into the many possible expressions of desire and gender, here in the context of Berlin's sex-positive queer circle, in a screening that will be attended by filmmaker Maja Classen and producer Saralisa Volm. The eight feature films are competing for a prize worth €1,000.

 

Two new Portuguese documentaries – This Woman Is a Man, by André Murraças and Flávio Gil, and My Kingdom for a King, by Sónia Baptista and Raquel Melgue – are presented under the heading Gender Play. Radically different in their concepts and subjects, the two titles share the idea of play, of gender being represented or acted out, as these films seek to reflect on issues of gender performativity.

 

In the talks, the Queer Resistance section will feature the artistic collective Planeta Manas at the end of the screening of ‘The Crowd’, and the screening ‘No Pride in Genocide (Queer Cinema for Palestine)’ will be introduced by Dima Akram from the humanitarian aid association Seeds of Hope; Queer Focus will have filmmakers Ian Kaler, Paula Tomás Marques, Pol Merchan and Theo Jean Cuthand for a debate at the opening screening of the thematic focus ‘Did You Tell Them You Were Trans?’; the Lionel Soukaz retrospective will have filmmaker Stéphane Gérard present for a conversation with the audience; and Gender Play will feature actor and director Fernando Heitor in the screening of ‘This Woman is a Man’ and the drag kings participating in ‘My Kingdom for a King’, in addition to the respective filmmakers of each film, for conversations with the audience.

 

There is also space for a photography exhibition, ‘Where Love Is Illegal’, a project led by photographer Robin Hammond, which presents testimonies of survival from people in countries with laws that criminalise same-sex relationships and non-conforming gender expressions. The initiative, developed by the non-profit organisation Witness Change in partnership with Doctors Without Borders, can be seen in the foyer of Cinema São Jorge throughout the festival.

 

Because it is important to be in community and there is much to process and celebrate, the party programme includes Purex Clube – this year the festival's Official Bar – and a night at Casa do Comum.

 

Queer Lisboa 29 has a budget of €155,000 and is funded by the Lisbon City Council and ICA – Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual, as well as important partnerships such as those established with the Embassies of Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), FLAD, Contranatura, Filmin, Pousadas da Juventude, The Late Birds hotel, among many others.

 

Queer Lisboa 29 complete programme:

 

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

* Opening Night: Plainclothes, Carmen Emmi (USA, 2025, 95’)

* Closing Night: Between Goodbyes, Jota Mun (USA, South Korea, 2024, 96’)

Death and Life Madalena, Guto Parente (Brazil, Portugal, 2025, 85’)
To Live, to Die, to Live Again, Gaël Morel (France, 2024, 109’)

 

FEATURE FILM COMPETITION

Cactus Pears, Rohan Parashuram Kanawade (India, UK, Canada, 2025, 112’)
Dreamers, Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor (UK, 2025, 78’)
Drifting Laurent, Anton Balekdjian, Léo Couture, Mattéo Eustachon (France, 2025, 110’)

Drunken Noodles, Lucio Castro (USA, Argentina, 2025, 82’)

Jone, Sometimes, Sara Fantova (Spain, 2025, 80’)
Lesbian Space Princess, Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese (Australia, 2025, 87’)

Queerpanorama, Jun Li (USA, Hong Kong, 2025, 87’) 

Salomé, André Antônio (Brazil, 2024, 118’)

 

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

A Body to Live in, Angelo Madsen (USA, 2025, 98’) 

Edhi Alice, Ilrhan Kim (South Korea, 2024, 127’) 

Familiar Places, Mala Reinhardt (Germany, 2024, 94’)  

I've Already Died Three Times, Maxence Vassilyevitch (France, 2025, 65’) 

Lovers in the Sky, Fermín de la Serna (USA, Argentina, 2024, 77’) 

My Sweet Child, Maarten de Schutter (The Netherlands, 2025, 58’)  
This Is My Body, Jérôme Clément-Wilz (France, 2025, 64’) 

Tripoli / A Tale of Three Cities, Raed Rafei (Lebanon, 2024, 88’)  

 

SHORT FILM COMPETITION
Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think that You Might Fail?, Bec Pecaut (Canada, 2024, 17’) 

Before the Sea Forgets, Lê Ngọc Duy (Singapore, 2025, 17’) 

Being Blue, Luke Fowler (UK, 2025, 17’) 

Big Boys Don’t Cry, Arnaud Delmarle (France, 2025, 23’)
Birthdays, Adrian Jalily (Denmark, 2025, 19’)
Born at Night, Alba Cros (Spain, 2025, 18’)

Correct Me if I’m Wrong, Hao Zhou (Germany, USA, 2025, 23’)
The First Times, Giulia Cosentino, Perla Sardella (Italy, Spain, 2025, 16’)

Ghosts of Hard, chapter 2, Lazare Lazarus (France, 2024, 28’)

Homunculus, Bonheur Suprême (France, Italy, 2025, 18’) 

Howl, Domini Marshall (Australia, 2025, 16’)

Lloyd Wong, Unfinished, Lesley Loksi Chan (Canada, 2025, 29’) 

My Therapist Said, I Am Full of Sadness, Monica Vanesa Tedja (Indonesia, 2024, 22’) 

The Mud Under My Window, Violette Delvoye (France, Belgium, 2025, 13’)

Neko, Inês Oliveira (Portugal, 2025, 30’)
Oceania, Valentin Noujaïm (France, 2024, 24’)
Towards the Sun, Far from the Center, Luciana Merino, Pascal Viveros (Chile, 2024, 17’)

Twilight Ladies, Alain Soldeville, Alexe Liebert (France, 2024, 11’)

We Were No Desert, Agustina Comedi, Chiachio & Giannone (Argentina, 2024, 12’)

Whoever Deserves It, Will Be Immortal, Nay Mendl (Cuba, Brazil, 2024, 19’)
 

IN MY SHORTS COMPETITION

All Possible Neighborhoods, Matteo Giampetruzzi (Spain, 2024, 9’) 

Close to September, Lucía G. Romero (Spain, 2025, 30’)
Erogenesis, Xandra Popescu (Germany, 2025, 15’) 

I Am a Flower, Ariel Victor Arthanto (Germany, 2024, 13’)
Icebergs, Carlos Pereira (Germany, 2024, 20’)
Metamorphosia, Elsa Michaud (France, 2025, 15’) 

Off to Die, Jordan Brandao Rodrigues (France, 2024, 19’) 

Rezbotanik, Pedro Gonçalves Ribeiro (Brazil, Portugal, Spain, 2025, 18’) 

To Our Gardens, Samuel Dijoux (France, 2024, 28’) 

Touch Me With Your Eyes, Anaïs Kaboré (Belgium, 2024, 27’) 

 

QUEER ART COMPETITION
Cherub, Devin Shears (Canada, 2024, 74’)
Holy Electricity, Tato Kotetishvili (Georgia, The Netherlands, 2024, 95’) 

Museum of the Night, Fermín Eloy Acosta (Argentina, 2025, 88’)
Not Even God Is as Fair as Your Jeans, Sergio Silva (Brazil, 2025, 74’) 

Rains Over Babel, Gala del Sol (Colombia, USA, Spain, 2024, 111’) 

The Shipwrecked Triptych, Deniz Eroglu (The Netherlands, Germany, 2025, 90’)

Sirens Call, Lina Sieckmann, Miri Ian Gossing (Germany, The Netherlands, 2025, 121’) 

Truth or Dare, Maja Classen (Germany, 2024, 79’)

PANORAMA

Alexina B. Composing Lives, Alexis Borràs (Spain, France, 2025, 77’)
I’m Your Venus, Kimberly Reed (USA, 2024, 85’)

Latin Blood - The Ballad of Ney Matogrosso, Esmir Filho (Brazil, 2025, 129’)

My Boyfriend the Fascist, Matthias Lintner (Italy, 2025, 95’)

Night Stage, Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon (Brazil, 2025, 119’)

Peter Hujar’s Day, Ira Sachs (USA, Germany, 2025, 76’) 

Pillion, Harry Lighton (UK, 2025, 106’)

Sally!, Deborah Craig (USA, 2024, 95’) 

Thesis on a Domestication, Javier van de Couter (Argentina, 2024, 113’)

 

QUEER RESISTANCE
The Crowd, Sahand Kabiri (Iran, 2025, 70’)

State of Firsts, Chase Joynt (USA, 2025, 93’) 

“No Pride in Genocide” (Queer Cinema for Palestine):

  a tangled web drowning in honey, Hannah Hull, Tara Hakim (Canada, 2023, 10’)

  Abgad Hawaz, Robin Riad (Canada, 2024, 2’)

  Aliens in Beirut, Raghed Charabaty (Lebanon, Canada, 2025, 17’)

  Blood like Water, Dima Hamdan (Palestine, 2023, 14’)

  Don’t Take My Joy Away, Omar Gabriel (Lebanon, 2024, 7’)

  I Never Promised You a Jasmine Garden, Teyama Alkamli (Canada, 2023, 20’)

  Out of Gaza, Jannis Osterburg, Seza Tiyara Selen (Germany, 2025, 9’)
  Palcorecore, Dana Dawud (Palestine, 2023, 6’)

 

QUEER FOCUS: “Did You Say You Were Trans?”

a_blurred_fluxx_00.avi, Osadolor Osawemwenze (USA, 2024, 26’)
By Hook or by Crook, Harry Dodge, Silas Howard (USA, 2002, 90’)

Dreams of Sunlight through Trees, Theo Jean Cuthand (Canada, Austria, 2024, 16’) 

The Growing Edge, Ian Kaler (Austria, Germany, 2025, 17’) 

Life Story, Jessica Dunn Rovinelli (USA, 2024, 10’)

The Light that Covers the Wounds, Pol Merchan (Spain, Germany, 2024, 12’) 

Something Must Break, Ester Bergsmark (Sweden, 2014, 81’)
When We Dead Awaken, Paula Tomás Marques (Portugal, Spain, 2022, 10’)

 

GENDER PLAY

My Kingdom for a King, Sónia Baptista, Raquel Melgue (Portugal, 2025, 45’)

This Woman Is a Man, André Murraças, Flávio Gil (Portugal, 2025, 63’) 

 

RETROSPECTIVE: Lionel Soukaz
150 poèmes mis en sang, Lionel Soukaz, Michel Journiac (France, 1993, 13’)

Artistes en Zone Troublés, Lionel Soukaz, Stéphane Gérard (France, 2023, 39’)

L’année des treize lunes, Lionel Soukaz, Tony Tonnerre (France, 2001, 18’)

Autoportrait, Lionel Soukaz (France, 2002, 8’)

Ballade pour un homme seul, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1969, 18’)

Carottage, Lionel Soukaz, Powers, Stéphane Gérard (France, 2009, 47’)

Les Corps d’amour de Pasolini, Kami Kaz, Lionel Soukaz, Olivier Hérkaz (France, 2005, 34’)

En corps +, Lionel Soukaz, Stéphane Gérard (France, 2021, 65’)
The Homosexual Century, Guy Hocquenghem, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1979, 83’)

Ixe, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1980, 44’)
La loi X - La nuit en permanence, Lionel Soukaz (France, 2001, 9’)

La Marche gaie, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1980, 12’)

Lolo Mégalo blessé en son honneur, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1974, 17’)

Maman que man, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1982, 49’)

Nu lacté, Lionel Soukaz, Othello Vilgard, Xavier Baert (France, 2002, 6’)
RV, mon ami, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1994, 28’)

Le Sexe des anges, Lionel Soukaz (France, 1977, 45’)

 

TALKS

Talk with André Murraças, Fernando Heitor and Flávio Gil (Gender Play)

Talk with Ian Kaler, Paula Tomás Marques, Pol Merchan and Theo Jean Cuthand (Queer Focus: 'Did You Say You Were Trans?')

Talk with Planeta Manas (Queer Resistance)
Talk with Raquel Melgue, Sónia Baptista and guest Kings (Gender Play)
Talk with Stéphane Gérard (Retrospective: Lionel Soukaz)

 

EXHIBITION

Where Love Is Illegal (Witness Change / Doctors Without Borders)

 

PARTIES

As Metamorfoses Ambulantes, with DJ Nicolle Velcro (Purex Clube)

Millennial Angst, with DJ marum (Purex Clube)

Festa da Mensagem, with DJ & host Manel Moreira (Purex Clube)

Dyke Night, with DJ Rafa Jacinto (Casa do Comum)

Sextou!, with DJ Yizhaq (Purex Clube)