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OPENING FILME – NATIONAL PREMIERE
AMEL GUELLATY
Tunisia, France Qatar · Fic · 2025 · 99′
‖‖ QUI 30 OUT · 9.30 PM · Cinema São Jorge, Sala MO – OPENING CERIMONY
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PROGRAMME | CATALOGUE | SCHEDULE | 12TH EDITION TRAILER | POSTER
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MUSEU do ALJUBE 28 OUT || ISCTE 29OUT || CASA DO COMUM e CINEMA SÃO JORGE 30OUT || CINEMA SÃO JORGE 31OUT || CINEMA SÃO JORGE 1NOV || CINEMA SÃO JORGE 2NOV ||
GOETHE INSTITUT, MUSEU DO ALJUBE e CINEMATECA 3 a 6 NOV
FILMS
Sections
||||||| GENERAL COMPETITION | FEATURE FILMS • MEET THE JURY
||||||| COMPETIÇÃO GERAL | CURTAS • MEET THE JURY
||||||| TRAVESSIAS • MEET THE JURY
||||||| COMEÇAR A OLHAR | SCHOOL FILMS • MEET THE JURY
||||||| OUT OF COMPETITION FEATURE FILMS
||||||| TWO GAZES ON WAR: JASMILA ŽBANIĆ & MIRJANA KARANOVIĆ
||||||| Schedule and Film Index
BEYOND THE FILMS
PROGRAMA INDÚSTRIA |||||||
• PITCHING PITCH YOUR SHORT!
• MESA REDONDA PERIPHERAL FESTIVALS AND THE FILM INDUSTRY: CHALLENGES
AND OPPORTUNITIES
• MASTERCLASS THE POWER OF TOGETHERNESS: WOMEN, CINEMA, AND COLLECTIVE DREAMS
• WORKSHOP INTIMACY SCRIPTWRITING FOR FILM & TV
• 3º ENCONTRO OLHARES DO MEDITERRÂNEO / MUTIM COMO FUGIR A ESTEREÓTIPOS
NA ESCRITA DE INTIMIDADE?
ROUND TABLES |||||||
• MULHERES, TERRA, REVOLUÇÃO
• ISRAEL’S ATTACKS ON NGOS: A LONG HISTORY
• CORPOS E FAMÍLIAS: TRADIÇÕES E RESISTÊNCIAS
• TRAVESSIAS: CRESCER EM GUERRA, FUTUROS AMPUTADOS
• VIOLÊNCIA SEXUAL: DO CORPO AO DIGITAL
Ri/VER PROJECT PRESENTATION |||||||
• OS OLHARES DAS CRIANÇAS
VISUAL ARTS PROGRAMME |||||||
• OLHARES EXPERIMENTAIS
• PROGRAMA DE VIDEOARTE
• SACRED BREAD – BREAKING BREAD
WORKSHOPS |||||||
• NOMADA NOTEBOOKS
• CAN CINEMA HELP SAVE THE PLANET?
CHILDREN & FAMILIES |||||||
BOOKSHOPS |||||||
• GOOD COMPANY BOOKS
• LIVRARIA DAS INSURGENTES
• LIVRARIA GRETA
• LIVRARIA TIGRE DE PAPEL
||||||| BUY TICKETS FOR CINEMA SÃO JORGE
||||||| BY TICKETS FOR CINEMATECA
SOWING RESISTANCE,
CULTIVATING UTOPIAS
‘Sowing Resistance, Cultivating Utopias’ is the desire that drives the 12th edition of Olhares do Mediterrâneo – Women’s Film Festival. From this desire, which is both a necessity and an ambition. The Festival has grown and extended in 2025, lasting ten days and occupying more venues in Lisbon: Cinema São Jorge, Cinemateca Portuguesa, Museu do Aljube, Casa do Comum, ISCTE-IUL and the Goethe-Institut, with pre-festival activities at Tasca das Artes, Terraço do Graal, Sala de Âmbito Cultural do El Corte Inglés and Cossoul. In a city that, like so many others, marginalises culture and dissenting voices, multiplying places of expression and encounter is becoming an increasingly urgent need.
The first session of this edition of the Festival takes place, not by chance, at Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade (Aljube Museum of Resistance and Freedom), a place ‘dedicated to the history and memory of the fight against dictatorship and the recognition of resistance in favour of freedom and democracy’, with the world premiere of the documentary Women, Land, Revolution, by Rita Calvário and Cecília Honório. This portrait of women agricultural workers who, from the fields of the interior of the country, challenged the dictatorship and lived through the Revolution of 25 April, is a testimony both to their presence and importance in agrarian reform, and to the power of ideas of social justice and equality, as well as to the need to constantly renew the labour of realising these ideals. Opening the Festival in this space is also a way of inscribing cinema in the territory of collective memory, invoking the past to shed the light on the struggles of the present and the future.
The Festival celebrates optimism and irreverence, too, with films such as Where the Wind Comes From – by young Tunisian director Amel Guellaty, which speaks of the despair of the generation that grew up after the Arab Spring, in an ironic and humorous road movie – and documentaries such as The Brink of Dreams, by the Egyptian duo Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir, which follows a group of girls determined to challenge the prejudices and traditions of a small village in southern Egypt by creating a street theatre group that denounces patriarchy and gender inequality. These narratives reveal the particularity and multiplicity of experiences, rebellions and resistance of women in Mediterranean countries, as well as their commonalities.
Environmental issues are also central to this year’s edition, with the screening of Marta Pessoa’s documentary This is not a Garden and several short films focused on the multiple ways in which human beings relate to nature, questioning extractive practices and exploring alternative modes and possibilities of living. The attentive and non-conformist gaze of the filmmakers selected in 2025 also explores sexual harassment and gender violence, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the struggle for independence of Sahrawi women, and the stories of Kurdish and Yazidi women. Here, cinema becomes a tool for denunciation, but also for political imagination to build new futures, pointing to fairer and more sustainable ways of coexistence.
With a programme that gives ample space to criticism, activism and revolt against social injustice, but also to private life, emotions and affections, in its 12th edition, Olhares do Mediterrâneo – Women’s Film Festival presents 63 films (feature-length and short films; documentaries, fiction, animations and experimental works) produced by 29 countries. A programme made up of diverse stories that give voice and visibility to women in different positions. Stories that, in their variety of themes and styles, portray the real world while sketching out the possibility of different worlds. A programme that is concerned with the present without ceasing to believe in the future, in the necessary utopias. A programme that takes up Angela Davis’ invitation to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world, and to do it all the time.
