News

Wang Bing, an essential Chinese filmmaker and a regular presence in Doclisboa’s programme, returns to the festival with Man in Black, the opening film of the 21st edition, scheduled for 19 October, 9pm, at Cinema São Jorge. Leonor Teles’ first feature-length fiction film, Baan is the closing film of Doclisboa’ 23 – and will have its Portuguese premiere on 29 October 29, 9pm, at Culturgest.

In Man In Black, Wang Bing – author of works such as Fathers and Sons (Doclisboa 2014) and Dead Souls (Doclisboa 2018) – portrays the body and soul of Wang Xilin, a Chinese composer and dissident. Using excerpts from Xilin’s symphonies, the filmmaker registers the horrors recalled by the octogenarian composer, stories of dehumanization in a country and a regime in permanent upheaval. Wang Xilin will be in Lisbon for the opening session of the 21st edition of the festival.

On 29 October, it’s Leonor Teles’ turn. Baan (“house” in Thai), the...

The people dotting Leonor Teles’ shorts are all caught in the midst of seismic transformations, drifters who watch their home turfs push them away and change at mind-blowing speed. Her Berlinale-winning Batrachian’s Ballad (2016) offered an incendiary study of the Romani experience in present-day Portugal filtered through the prism of Teles’ own roots in the local Ciganos community; Ashore (2018) tailed an aging fisherman from a riverfront village perched between tradition and modernity; and Dogs Barking at Birds (2019) followed a working-class family wrestling with the capital’s rampant gentrification. Thai for “home,” the title of Teles’ feature debut literalizes a preoccupation that’s been at the cornerstone of all the director’s films. In its barest terms, Baan is a chronicle of a tumultuous romance stretching across weeks and time zones, but it’s also and most significantly a snapshot of 21st-century restlessness, a portrait of two young wanderers for whom...

One belongs in two places: in love and at home. With her sophomore feature, Golden Leopard contender Leonor Teles questions the stability of both. “Baan” (Thai for home) reimagines the world of a lovelorn person coming to terms with her own loneliness through a quasi-magical shift between Bangkok and Lisbon.

Part of Locarno’s main competition, “Baan” follows a young woman named L. (Carolina Miragaia) on her emotional journey, as she meets, falls for, and recovers from a serendipitous encounter with the elusive K. (Meghna Lall).

L. is an architect, but she is not bound to any place or home in particular. Instead, she sublimates the now-lost intimacy wandering through the city at sunrise, on the road to self-discovery.

With its idiosyncrasies, “Baan” fits well within the catalog of its production company, Uma Pedra no Sapato, and its support for the brazen voices of Portuguese cinema, old and new, such...