MDOC – Melgaço International Documentary Festival is back from July 29th to August 4th with the aim of showing non-fiction films that demonstrate the authors' point of view on social, individual and cultural issues related to identity, memory and border.
These themes are the starting point for the festival in the presentation of documentaries with cinematographic expression, sharing points of view on a world going through crises and in constant transformation, offering a space for reflection and challenging spectators to dialogue and reflection about universal issues that affect the society in which we live.
When celebrating its 10th edition, MDOC selected 31 documentaries from 21 countries (9 are Portuguese): 20 feature-length films and 11 short and medium-length films.
The Official Jury of the Jean-Loup Passek Award is made up of Angelos Rallis, Greek director and producer, Irina Trocan, professor of cinema studies at the National University of Theater and Cinema in Bucharest (UNATC) and film critic, Mohammadreza Farzad, Iranian documentary filmmaker, Raquel Schefer, researcher, programmer and Associate Professor at Sorbonne Nouvelle University and Truls Lie, editor-in-chief of Modern Times Review.
The D. Quixote Prize, awarded by FICC, International Federation of Film Clubs, will have a jury composed by Mário Ventura, from Barreiro Film Club, Anders Ekman, from Nes Film Club, in Norway, and Krzysztof Tadeusz Wiewióra, from Discussion Film Club "DKF Politechnika " based in Wrocław, Poland.
Off Screen, the summer course coordinated by José da Silva Ribeiro, Alfonso Palazón Meseguer and Manoela dos Anjos Afonso, is focused on theme of Cinema and Revolution and is part of the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, giving particular relevance to the cinematography that addressed the topic in Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Chile and Portuguese-speaking African countries.
The Frontal Shot film and photographic residencies, guided by Pedro Sena Nunes, will connect MDOC to the territory and produce four documentaries and three photographic projects that will be premiered in the following edition.
The project Who are we here? organized by Álvaro Domingues and Daniel Maciel with the guidance and scientific monitoring of Albertino Gonçalves, will focus on the parish of Alvaredo and will continue with ethnographic collections and audiovisual documentary records.
X-RAYDOC, a section of the Festival coordinated by Jorge Campos, will welcome Sérgio C. Andrade for a conversation/debate about the documentary "Adeus, Until Meu Regresso" (1974) by António-Pedro Vasconcelos.
Catarina Mourão – winner of the awards for best Portuguese documentary in “The Wolf’s Lair” (MDOC 2016) and “Astrakan 79” (MDOC 2023) – will tutor the Documentary Cinema Workshop “The House and the World”, where she will share her creative process of directing.
“Cinema as a place to dispute memory and its visual and sound potential” will be the theme of José Filipe Costa’s masterclass, based on his film Red Line.
The Melgaço Jean-Loup Passek Museum of Cinema will host the exhibition Memories of April 1974-2000.
For those who cannot participate in the entire festival, MDOC proposes, on the 3rd and 4th of August, Hop to Melgaço, a program with film screenings, conversations with directors, visits to exhibitions, and the Jean-Loup Passek Museum of Cinema and the Espaço e Memória Museum.
