LISBON — Portugal’s oldest film festival is marking three decades by refusing to shrink into a niche. Queer Lisboa – International Queer Film Festival opened Friday for its 30th edition (18–26 September 2026) with 94 features, documentaries and shorts across the Cinemateca Portuguesa and Cinema São Jorge — a programme that pairs new LGBTQ titles with restored counterculture classics and, for the first time, a dedicated Queer Family strand for kids and parents.
Artistic director João Ferreira told *Variety* the festival’s birth at the Cinemateca in 1997 — then the Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, opening with Jean Genet’s only film, *Un chant d’amour* — already distinguished it from peer events in Madrid or Paris. Institutional support from day one meant a broad cinephile public, even while early years organised by Portugal’s ILGA chapter kept a community spine. “We were interested in a queer gaze at the world… a camp aesthetic,” Ferreira said of a programming philosophy that outran the festival’s original name.
Opening, closing and a new family gate
The edition opens with the Portuguese premiere of Ira Sachs’s *The Man I Love*, starring Rami Malek — continuing a Lisbon relationship that previously brought *Passages* and *Peter Hujar’s Day*. Leah Nelson’s animated drama *Tangles* closes the festival. Between those poles sit nearly a dozen sections: five competitions and six non-competitive sidebars.
New this year is Queer Family, built around culturally enriching independent films on inclusion and identity. Two Brazilian features anchor it: Allan Deberton’s Berlinale award-winner *Gugu’s World* and Priscilla Kellen’s animated *Papaya*. Programmer and director Ana David told *Variety* the long-standing goal is younger audiences — and that early ticket sales for the family screenings already look strong. “We’ll see if it’s the kids bringing their parents, or if it’s the parents bringing their kids,” she said.
Anniversary retrospectives and post-revolution Portugal
Hitting 30 in the same season BFI Flare turns 40 and San Francisco’s Frameline turns 50, Queer Lisboa expands its Retrospectives to 19 titles. The list spans the Wachowskis’ *Bound* (1996), Sally Potter’s *Orlando* (1992) — screening for the first time at the Cinemateca, with a 35mm print — Lisa Cholodenko’s *High Art*, Patrice Chéreau’s *The Wounded Man*, Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams’ *Shinjuku Boys*, and Frank Ripploh’s *Taxi zum Klo*.
A newly restored print of João Paulo Ferreira’s 1976 subversive queer musical comedy *Fatucha Superstar* — inspired by *Jesus Christ Superstar* and made in the wake of Portugal’s revolution — anchors a local lineage. With Óscar Alves, Ferreira co-founded the Cineground collective that screened Super 8 work in Lisbon’s queer bars in the 1970s; the anniversary frame treats that DIY history as canon, not footnote.
Competitions, discoveries and the curation problem
World premieres in the Queer Art Competition include André Godinho’s debut *Nothing Left*, described as a Portuguese queer take on *Punishment Park*, and Benjamin Ramírez Pérez and Stefan Ramírez Pérez’s hybrid documentary *Life Is About Losing Everything*, on Canadian poet Lynn Crosbie. Feature competition titles range from South Africa’s *Black Burns Fast* (Sandulela Asanda) and Mexico’s *On the Road* (David Pablos) to Spain/Germany’s *Strange River* (Jaume Claret Muxart), France/Italy’s *La Gradiva* (Marine Atlan), Belgium/Netherlands’ *Julian* (Cato Kusters), Brazil’s *London* (Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli) and the Philippines’ *Raging* (Ryan Machado).
Special screenings include Pedro Almodóvar’s *Bitter Christmas* and Jane Schoenbrun’s *Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma*; Panorama brings recent festival hits such as *Jim Queen*, *Maspalomas*, *Outerlands* and *Prosecution*. Ferreira’s operational point for a 30-year-old queer festival is the filter, not the feed: acquiring titles is easier than it was in 1997; curating 90-plus films from the flood is harder. The anniversary bet is that Lisbon’s cinephile queer gaze — family seats included — still has room for both Almodóvar and Super 8 blasphemy.
This article draws on Ed Meza’s *Variety* report published 18 September 2026. Quotes follow that outlet.