The film “The Brothers Sisters” by Jacques Audiard marks on Friday the start of the 12th edition of the Lisbon & Sintra Film Festival (LEFFEST), which includes several previews and a tribute to the director João Botelho.
The Brothers Sisters, starring John C. Riley and Joaquin Phoenix, will be shown at the Olga Cadaval Cultural Center in Sintra, in a session that will feature the director.
The festival will run until November 25 in various locations in Sintra and Lisbon and although it also has theatre, plastic arts and music, it is the cinema – and the meetings of its authors with the public -, which commands once again the programming.
The director João Botelho, “an absolutely fundamental filmmaker of Portuguese cinema”, in the words of the director of LEFFEST, the producer Paulo Branco, is the great honoree of this year, with “the most complete retrospective of his work to date, the first in Portugal.
In competition at the festival will be eleven films, among them Louis Garrel’s L’Homme fièle, Jules Bressane’s ‘Seduction of the Beef’, Brady Corbet’s ‘Vox Lux’, Ethan Hawke’s ‘Blaze’ and ‘Ray & Lyz’ by Richard Billingham.
The jury of this edition consists of Walter Salles, Argentine pianist Martha Argerich, American writer and director Jonathan Littell, American pianist Stephen Kovacevich, American singer-songwriter and actress Christa Bell and the Portuguese artist Jorge Queiroz.
Out of competition will be shown, in an anthem, ‘Rome’, by Alfonso Cuarón, Leo de Oro 2018 in Venice, ‘Suspiria’ by Luca Guadagnino, and ‘The house that Jack built’ by Lars von Trier.
Among them are Julian Schnabel’s “At Eternity’s Gate”, Claire Denis’s “High Life”, “Loro 1” and “Loro 2” by Paolo Sorrentino, “Shoplifters” by Kore-eda Hirokazu (Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival), and ‘Touch me not’, by Adina Pintilie.
The special sessions will include, among others, Edgar Pêra’s ‘Magnetic Paths’ and ‘I still have a dream or two – the story of Pop Dell’Arte’ by Nuno Galopim and Nuno Duarte, ‘Works in Progress’, by Mathieu Amalric, and ‘Piazzolla, the Years of the Shark’ by Daniel Rosenfeld.
The program also includes retrospectives of the works of other directors, the American Paul Scharader, the Italian Mario Martone and the Kazakh Darezhan Omirbayev.
There will also be three themes that cross the festival: the American director David Lynch, who will revisit the work in various artistic disciplines, and two thematic cycles on neoliberalism, new fascism and utopia.
During the festival, on November 17, the “Small Stories” exhibition, which includes 55 large-scale analogue photographs by David Lynch, will be inaugurated at MU.SA in Sintra.
Also in the ambit of the festival, the exhibition ‘Psychogenic Fugue’ will be inaugurated, which includes a series of photographs, by Sandro Miller, in which the actor John Malkovich is portrayed in the skin of characters of the work of David Lynch.
The program dedicated to Lynch also includes the filmmaker’s films.
The thematic cycles of this edition run under the themes ‘Neoliberalism – the seed of populism and the new fascisms?’ and ‘The desire called’ Utopia ‘.
The program also includes the show ‘Dub Love’, which brings together Argentine performance artist Cecilia Bengolea and French choreographer and dancer François Chaignaud.
LEFFEST will take place at the Monumental Cinema, Espaço Nimas and D. Maria II National Theater in Lisbon, Olga Cadaval Cultural Center and MU.SA – Sintra Arts Museum, Sintra, and the National Palace Jardins de Queluz .
