FILMS
Sections
||||||| GENERAL COMPETITION | FEATURE FILMS • MEET THE JURY
||||||| GENERAL COMPETITION | SHORT FILMS • MEET THE JURY
||||||| TRAVESSIAS • MEET THE JURY
||||||| COMEÇAR A OLHAR | SCHOOL FILMS • MEET THE JURY
||||||| Schedule and Film Index

BEYOND THE MOVIES
ROUND TABLES |||||||
MASTERCLASS | VISUALIZE – WIN THE PRIZE |||||||
MASTERCLASS | CREATIVE STORYTELLING IN THE MODERN ERA |||||||
WORKSHOP FOR FAMILIES | OLHARES EM PEQUENINO |||||||

EYES
WIDE OPEN

When we started preparing the call for entries for the 8th edition of Olhares do Mediterrâneo – Women’s Film Festival, we were afraid we would receive very few films. We thought that the pandemic – with its travel restrictions, social distancing, closed schools and limited access to offi ces – would drastically limit the production of films in 2020 and 2021, especially independent films.

Luckily, we were wrong. This year we received more than 400 submissions. More precisely, we received 422 films (short and feature films, documentaries, fiction, animation and experimental films) from which we selected 44 for the competitive sections of the Festival. Additionally, we enriched the programme of Olhares do Mediterrâneo with important collaborations with other festivals. We have co-programmed the opening film, The Macaluso Sisters, with the Festa do Cinema Italiano, and we are screening three short films that were awarded at the 4th Beirut International Women Film Festival: The Present, A Day Off, Amygdala.

The mission of Olhares do Mediterrâneo is to promote the films made by women working in the countries around the Mediterranean. Women enter the Festival as filmmakers (directors, screenwriters, producers, editors, etc.), and not necessarily as the main characters of the stories they tell, because we are keen to show the wide variety of themes women filmmakers address. And yet, this year, women are the protagonists of many of the stories we received, and we are more than happy to show them to our audience.

These are stories of resilience, resistance, and revindications; stories of women who don’t want to stay still and quiet in the place that society or contingency defined for them; of women who look at themselves and the world, who question and challenge the reality around them, who create bonds, cross boundaries, and transmit legacies; of women who reveal themselves and speak loudly (and sometimes sing); of women who sometimes turn their bodies into works of art to challenge patriarchy.

In this year’s programme, like in the previous editions, there is also space for intimate stories. These are stories of entangled, at times melancholic, relationships and family ties; stories of complicated loves, with sad or funny endings. Still we never lose sight of the vastness of the world and the stories that fit in it and beyond. So we present migrant stories setting out at one end of the Mediterranean, going all the way to the Atlantic and then passing through Uranus. We also present stories of borders, real and symbolic, of prisons with bars or outside of confi nement, stories with happy endings, and dramas with no ending in sight. We bring you the world, as observed by the women of the Mediterranean, with eyes wide open.

João Miranda, João Robert, Margarida Silva Dias, Patricia Sá, Sara David Lopes,
Silvia Di Marco, Tijana Obradović 
Programming Team