Saturno o pequeño tratado de la melancolía, by Argentine filmmaker Mariano Donoso Makowski, will have its world premiere in the International Competition at Doclisboa 2026, which has announced its full program featuring 198 films from 51 countries. Filmed over the course of a decade within the Huarpe community of Lagunas del Rosario, in the territory of the former Guanacache lagoons, the documentary is the first part of a trilogy. It will be one of the 11 films selected for the Portuguese festival’s International Competition, which will take place in Lisbon from October 15 to 25.

The 24th edition of Doclisboa will feature 34 world premieres, 13 international premieres, three European premieres and 32 Portuguese films. The program brings together works by filmmakers including Jia Zhangke, Mariano Llinás, Lynne Sachs, Denis Côté, Sophie Roger and John Torres, alongside a selection spanning generations, geographies and different approaches to documentary filmmaking. Once again, the festival places the relationship between memory, history, politics, archives and formal experimentation at the center of its program.

Donoso Makowski returns to the festival after previously presenting Buenos Aires al Pacífico, a film that also circulated internationally on the festival circuit. This time, Saturno o pequeño tratado de la melancolía draws on a decade-long experience in the Huarpe territory of Lagunas del Rosario to develop a portrait of a community and a landscape shaped by historical and environmental transformations. The film launches a trilogy that will continue to explore the relationship between territory, memory and forms of life.

The International Competition will feature 11 films, seven of them world premieres, three international premieres and one European premiere. Among the announced titles is also Life of Jorge Luis Borges, by Mariano Llinás, which approaches the life and literary universe of the Argentine writer through his papers, books and places. Jia Zhangke will present Du Ling zhi ying (Torino Shadow), about a woman who travels from southern China to Turin to meet her husband, while Denis Côté will compete with Nobody’s Violence, a fiction film that explores death, love and encounters with others. Also included in the selection are Robert and June (and all the time in the world), by Jem Cohen, and Wild Asparagus, by Avi Mograbi.

The Riscos section will bring together works by filmmakers including Lee Anne Schmitt, Ben Russell, Declan Clarke, Lucía Seles, Ted Fendt and Lynne Sachs, alongside special focuses on French filmmaker Sophie Roger and Filipino filmmaker John Torres. Roger’s program includes The Bitches, while Torres will be represented by The Remotes, Lukas the Strange and Todo todo teros. The section will once again explore open and experimental forms, with particular attention to the archive as cinematic material.

In Da Terra à Lua, the festival presents a selection of films in which cinema, history and politics come together to interrogate images of the past and present. Among the titles are Atlas de la Desaparición, by Manuel Correa, about relatives of people who disappeared during the Spanish Civil War; The Land That Wouldn’t Die, by Andreas Goldstein, about the final years of the German Democratic Republic; and Habibi Hussein, by Alex Bakri, which explores the recovery of Cinema Jenin and the history of its former projectionist. The section will also include Mi país imaginario, the final feature by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán, presented in a single screening.

Heart Beat will focus on the connections between music, artistic creation and memory. The section will feature, among other films, Kurtág Fragments, by Dénes Nagy; The Voice of Orpheus, by Arnold Pasquier; and Five Eyes, by Karim Debbagh. As part of Mostra España, the festival will also present a focus on Jonás Trueba, featuring his new film Vistillas and Los ilusos 13 + 13, in dialogue with Chicho o mientras el cuerpo aguante (una comedia didáctica), by his father Fernando Trueba.

The program is completed by the Verdes Anos competition, dedicated to first films and emerging talents; Nebulae, the festival’s industry platform, with Greece as its guest country; and the abcDoc educational project. The festival will open with Guerrilha no Asfalto, by Edgar Pêra, which combines archival material, fiction and artificial intelligence to revisit the testimony of a former member of the FP-25 and the filmmaker’s memories of the turbulent 1980s. The closing film will be Thanks for Coming, by Alain Cavalier, who at the age of 95 presents a new chapter in his diary filmography.

Doclisboa 2026 will take place from October 15 to 25 at Culturgest, Cinema São Jorge, Cinemateca Portuguesa and Cinema Ideal, as well as with a performance scheduled at the Centro de Arte Moderna of the Gulbenkian. Tickets for the screenings will go on sale online on September 28.

The Measured Everlasting Is 1.334 Billion Years / Kamphaeng Chakkrawan — Thunska

Pansittivorakul — Tailândia, Hong Kong, China — 2026 — 98 min (Estreia Mundial)

About Space and Depth — Paula Gaitán — Brasil — 2026 — 138 min (Estreia Mundial)

Saturn or a Brief Treatise on Melancholy / Saturno o pequeño tratado de la melancolía — Mariano Donoso Makowski — Argentina — 2026 — 112 min (Estreia Mundial)

Geography Is Destiny / Географията е съдба — Rayna Teneva — Alemanha, Bulgária, Áustria — 2026 — 69 min (Estreia Internacional)

Memoirs of a Badger / Mémoires d’un blaireau — Isabelle Prim — França — 2026 — 94 min (Estreia Internacional)

Memórias de Uma Viagem pelo Alto Rio Negro — Kasia Mich, Dani Correia — Brasil — 2026 — 71 min (Estreia Mundial)

For the Moon / Car la Lune — Éric Baudelaire — França — 2026 — 88 min (Estreia Europeia)

Smarty / Umnitsa — Nikita Lavretski, Sergey Kolosovski — Lituânia — 2026 — 88 min (Estreia Mundial)

The Centaur / Le Centaure — Jacques Meilleurat — França — 2026 — 65 min (Estreia Internacional)

Don’t Touch Me / Noli Me Tangere — Ghassan Salhab — Líbano — 2026 — 72 min (Estreia Mundial)

13 Alfinetes / 13 Pins — João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata — Portugal — 2026 — 61 min (Estreia Mundial)

PORTUGUESE COMPETITION

Povo e Poder / People and Power — Ico Costa — Portugal, França, Moçambique — 2026 — 190 min (Estreia Mundial)

Os Continuadores da Revolução — Pedro Neves — Portugal, Moçambique, França — 2026 — 91 min (Estreia Mundial)

The Morning Wind / Vent du matin — Cláudia Ribeiro — Portugal — 2026 — 82 min (Estreia Mundial)

Visitas de Uma Parente Afastada / Visits from a Distant Relative — Inês Oliveira — Portugal — 2026 — 62 min (Estreia Mundial)

A Voz de Todos / Everyone’s Voice – Jornal do Fundão — Manuel Mozos — Portugal — 2026 — 81 min (Estreia Mundial)

Hipogeus / Hypogea — Raul Domingues — Portugal — 2026 — 39 min (Estreia Mundial)

A casa é a ruína de uma casa / The house is the ruin of a house — Inês Sapeta Dias — Portugal — 2026 — 31 min (Estreia Mundial)

Sopa de Cavalo Cansado / Tired Horse Soup — Maria Novo — Portugal — 2026 — 16 min (Estreia Mundial)

Golden Hour / Goruden Awa — André Santos Martins — Japão, Alemanha, Portugal — 2026 — 66 min (Estreia Mundial)

The Continuation / La continuación — Maxime Martinot — França, Portugal — 2026 — 30 min (Estreia Mundial)

Mysticisme du Sud — Fábio Penela — Portugal — 2026 — 34 min (Estreia Mundial)

GREEN YEARS

Ponto de Fuga / Vanishing Point — Rita Torres — Portugal — 2026 — 5 min (Estreia Mundial)

I Fear My Father More than N*tanyahu — Kay Ayach — Portugal, Hungria, Bélgica, Líbano — 2025 — 18 min (Estreia Mundial)

A Pulga — Francisco João, Vasco Morais — Portugal — 2026 — 27 min (Estreia Mundial)

a sea, a sea, a sea, a sea / more, more, more, more — Dasha Likhaia — Áustria, Rússia — 2026 — 48 min (Estreia Internacional)

Outras Manhãs Distantes / Other Distant Mornings — João Coroa Justino — Portugal — 2026 — 25 min (Estreia Mundial)

Frozen Lands / Les Terres gelées — Thomas Schira, Takeiki Flon — Bélgica — 2026 — 29 min (Estreia Internacional)

Yilma — Elena Berelowitsch — Cuba, Itália — 2026 — 10 min (Estreia Mundial)

Square of the Unseen / Platia Aoraton — Theodore Selekos — Grécia — 2026 — 30 min (Estreia Internacional)

A Fossa / The Trench — Manuel Ferreira — Portugal — 2025 — 39 min (Estreia Mundial)

Calandra — Chloe Cazorla, Lucas Lagrange, Laura Raniela, Jaime Aurata — Espanha — 2026 — 24 min (Estreia Mundial)

Catacombs / Saradeeb — Shehab Fatoum — Alemanha — 2026 — 29 min (Estreia Internacional)