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French filmmaker Marine Atlan’s lauded debut film “La Gradiva” proved the big winner at the 30th Queer Lisboa – International Queer Film Festival, taking the best feature film and Audience Awards.
A sweeping portrait
of the vicissitudes of youth, the film, which also won the top prize at the Cannes Critics’ Week, follows a group of French students on a final-year school trip to Pompeii, led by a passionate teacher eager to instill in them cultural and historical appreciation.
Lorena Ros’ Spanish documentary “Up and Running” (“Corren las Liebres”) likewise scored best documentary and Audience Awards. The film offers a candid look at the growing marginalization and homelessness amongst the trans ex-prisoner population in Barcelona.
This year’s festival, which closed Saturday with a screening of Leah Nelson’s animated feature film “Tangles,” was the most popular ever, attracting the highest number of attendees in its history, with more than 11,500 admissions at the festival’s 67 screenings over nine days — a 53% increase over 2025.
“This edition of the festival was particularly rewarding for us,” Queer Lisboa artistic director João Ferreira told Variety. “We surpassed the historic milestone of 11,500 spectators, the highest attendance ever recorded in our festival. And it was equally rewarding because we saw the audience respond to a particularly ambitious film program, which we put together to mark our 30th anniversary, from the retrospective — which was also one of the most extensive in our history in terms of number of screenings — to the many films from the major European festivals that we managed to premiere in Portugal.
“Having started the festival in 1997 as the first film festival in Lisbon, and still going strong, despite the many adversities we faced in these three decades, this really shows the artistic and political pertinence of queer cinema,” Ferreira added.
Indeed, with a program strongly characterized by themes of family, romantic and sexual relationships and a hopeful future, the festival team highlighted throughout the event the excellent shape of contemporary queer cinema and in particular the impressive range of the 2026 harvest of new films, which led to nine sold-out screenings, notably of “The Man I Love,” “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” “Bitter Christmas,” “The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions,” “Orlando,” “La conscience politique,” “The Passion According to GHB” and “Jim Queen.”
In awarding “La Gradiva” the festival’s top prize, the jury, comprised of cultural manager Kathleen Gomes, film programmer Maria João Madeira and actor Miguel Nunes, said the film was “a journey to a contemporary Italy that follows a group of teenagers at a decisive moment in their transition to adulthood. Amidst ruins, tectonic shifts and the vibrancy of nature, the characters question themselves, fall in love and hurt one another, navigating a landscape as ancient as it is unstable. The archaeology of history, the formation of identities and the search for a sense of belonging converge as the vital force behind this dazzling debut work, which touches on the fragility of human nature.”
Variety’s Jessica Kiang wrote in her review: “Seismically sensitive and deeply moving, Atlan’s film is simply one of the most piercingly accurate and immersive portrayals ever, of that fleeting moment when — not really a kid but still, really, a kid — you are simultaneously the most forcibly socialized and possibly the loneliest you will ever be.”
“La Gradiva” is one the five finalists in the race to be France’s entry for this best international feature Oscar. The film will be released Stateside via 1-2 Special and is being handled in Portugal by NOS Audiovisuais.
Commenting on its selection of “Up and Running” as best doc, the jury — comprising film programmer Diana Cipriano, journalist Filipe Santa-Bárbara and Luis Rosado from the RTP2 editorial team — said the film won “for the generosity and respect shown through the camera’s lens, for the magnetism of the women it portrays, particularly Noa, and the way it allows their character to rise above all their vulnerabilities.”
In the same section, the jury also awarded a special mention to Nông Nhật Quang’s Vietnamese doc “Baby Jackfruit Baby Guava.” The film, which premiered at Visions du Réel, journeys into the past through the director’s diaries and family photographs.
Mexican documentary “Nuestro Cuerpo Es una Estrella que Se Expande,” by siblings Semillites Hernández Velasco and Tania Hernández Velasco, a reflection on trans sensibilities intertwined with the landscape and family ties, won the top prize in the Queer Art Competition, a section dedicated to works that explore the boundaries of cinematic languages and genres.
The jury, comprising Brazilian director Leonardo Mouramateus, curator Marta Mestre and German filmmaker Matthias Müller, also awarded a special mention to “Life Is About Losing Everything,” by brothers Benjamin Ramírez Pérez and Stefan Ramírez Pérez, “a fascinating and colorful hybrid that serves as an adaptation of the highly distinctive universe of Canadian poet and feminist writer Lynn Crosbie,” presented as a world premiere at the festival.
In the Short Film Competition, “Je veux qu’on se souvienne de nous,” by French writer Hélène Giannecchini, won the best short award, while “Fronteriza,” a Brazilian-Paraguayan production by Nay Mendl and Rosa Caldeira, won the AltContent Award.
Taking the top prize in the In My Shorts Competition, dedicated to short films from European film schools, was “Ãsheghetam,” a French-Swiss-Iranian production by Iranian filmmaker Filmsaaz.
Across both sections, the festival screened 32 short films, judged by Brazilian cinematographer Aline Belfort, filmmaker Caio Amado Soares and programmer Lou Loução.
