IndieLisboa has announced the full-line up for its 2026 edition, unspooling between 30 April and 10 May across six venues in Lisbon. The festival opens with Rainer Frimmel and Tizza Covi’s docufiction The Loneliest Man in Town, recently premiered at the Berlinale, and closes with John Wilson’s debut documentary feature, The History of Concrete.

This year’s festival has a special retrospective dedicated to mockumentaries. This section, presented in collaboration with the Cinemateca Portuguesa, features a total of 21 films, spanning from the 1920s until more recent years. Classics of the likes of Spinal Tap, The Blair Witch Project and [REC], amongst many more, will thus rub shoulders with other movies made up until 2025, such as Damien Hauser’s Memory of Princess Mumbi (Kenya/Saudi Arabia/Switzerland).

For this year’s International Competition, the festival has selected ten films, all of which will be enjoying their Portuguese premieres. Three titles hail from Locarno: Blue Heron by Sophy Romvari (Canada/Hungary), Dry Leaf by Alexandre Koberidze (Georgia/Germany) and The Plant From the Canaries by Ruan Lan-Xi (Germany). Meanwhile, there is one movie from Toronto (Bouchra by Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, an Italian-Moroccan-US co-production), two titles from FID Marseille (Conference of the Birds by Amin Motallebzadeh, from Germany, and Cold Metal by Clemente Castor, from Mexico), Aistė Žegulytė’s Holy Destructors (Lithuania/France/Latvia, world-premiered at IDFA), Janaína Marques’ I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival (Brazil, recently premiered at the Berlinale), and lastly, two titles from Venice: Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes by Gabriel Azorín (Spain/Portugal) and Barrio Triste by Stillz (Colombia/USA). The International Competition also has a short-film section, which includes three world, three European, one international and 26 Portuguese premieres.

IndieLisboa upholds its reputation as one of the main events hosting Portuguese productions: this year, it boasts eight features in its National Competition. Four films will have their world premiere: Cochena by Diogo Allen (Portugal), Tropical Fractals by Leonardo Piron (Portugal/Brazil), Kiss and Be Friends by Ana Baldini and Roly Witherow (Portugal), and Segundo Amor by Rodrigo Braz Teixeira (Portugal/France). Four titles will have their Portuguese premiere: 18 Holes to Paradise by João Nuno Pinto, which bowed for the first time at Tallinn Black Nights; IFFR 2026’s opening film, Providence and the Guitar by João Nicolau; Susana de Sousa Dias’s latest documentary, Fordlândia Panacea (premiered at IDFA); and Pedro Ramalhete’s debut feature (part of the SMART7 Network programme – see the news), Eternal Flame. The National Competition for short films has a staggering number of world premieres: 11 out of the 21 selected films.

Another section with a sizeable proportion of Portuguese productions is Rhizome, a non-competitive strand (comprising features and shorts) dedicated to highlighting topical issues, also featuring renowned filmmakers and premieres. This year, it will include a special screening: a tribute to João Canijo, a Portuguese filmmaker who passed away in January. The festival will present the director’s cut of In the Darkness of the Night (2004). The section also includes new titles by João Botelho (The Old Salazar), Tiago Bartolomeu Costa and Joana Cunha Ferreira (Auto Da Casa), Raquel Freire (Women of the Revolution), Júlio Alves (Don’t Look Away) and Alexis Zelensky (Only Paper Is Brown), alongside movies such as The Blood Countess by Ulrike Ottinger (Austria/Luxembourg/Germany), The Education of Jane Cumming by Sophie Heldman (Germany/Switzerland/UK) and Rose by Markus Schleinzer (Austria/Germany), amongst many others.

Looking at another competitive section, Silvestre (comprising “films that reject established formulas, which awaken new languages and whose rebelliousness mirrors the spirit of the festival”), this year, it includes seven features and 16 shorts. The feature selection presents the latest works by Amanda Kramer (By Design), Pete Ohs (Erupcja), Nicolás Pereda (Everything Else Is Noise), Angela Schanelec (My Wife Cries), Mark Jenkin (Rose of Nevada), Julian Radlmaier (Phantoms of July) and Lucía Seles (The Bewilderment of Chile).

These are just some of the highlights of the festival’s sprawling programme, which also encompasses the following sections: Indie Music, Mouth of Madness, Cinema at the Pool, Director’s Cut, Novíssimos, SMART7, ESFN – European Short Film Network and IndieJúnior. The full line-up is available to peruse on the festival’s website.