Mozambique’s 2024 presidential election is the starting point for People and Power, the new documentary by Portuguese filmmaker Ico Costa, which will have its world premiere at DocLisboa 2026 in the Portuguese Competition. Fifty years after the country gained independence, the film explores a society marked by political tensions and social discontent, at a time when FRELIMO, the party that has been in power since 1975, is facing growing public distrust.
The election campaign provides a setting in which to observe the contradictions of a country shaped by economic inequality, corruption and restrictions on freedom of expression. Rather than focusing exclusively on the candidates or the institutional mechanisms of the electoral contest, Costa turns his attention to those experiencing its everyday consequences. The conversations, opinions and expectations of ordinary citizens form a collective portrait of Mozambique, where the memory of independence coexists with uncertainty about the country’s political and social future.
Filmed in the direct cinema tradition, the film travels across different regions of Mozambique, approaching events through observation and listening. Without a voice-over dictating the meaning of the images, the documentary allows individual experiences to reveal the concerns running through society. The electoral process thus emerges as something that extends beyond the choice of a new government: it also brings into question the relationship between citizens, institutions and a party that has governed the country since the end of colonial rule.
In People and Power, politics takes shape through the words and gestures of those seeking to make sense of the present and express their hopes for the future. The camera accompanies these voices without reducing them to a single position, leaving room for different interpretations of this historical moment. Its proximity to the people on screen captures both the tension surrounding the campaign and the demands of a population questioning the conditions under which public life unfolds.
Through this journey, Ico Costa examines the gap between the promises associated with independence and the reality of a country that, half a century later, continues to grapple with questions of political representation, civic participation and the exercise of fundamental freedoms. The result is a portrait of a society at a decisive moment in its history, with the voices of its people taking centre stage.
