‘La Gradiva’ Sweeps Top Prizes as Queer Lisboa Hits Record Attendance

Marine Atlan’s debut feature “La Gradiva” won both the best feature film prize and the Audience Award at the 30th Queer Lisboa – International Queer Film Festival, which closed Saturday with a screening of Leah Nelson’s animated feature “Tangles.”

The film, already the top prize winner at the Cannes Critics’ Week, is one of five finalists in the race to become France’s entry for the best international feature Oscar. It will be released in the United States via 1-2 Special and is handled in Portugal by NOS Audiovisuais.

“La Gradiva” follows a group of French students on a final-year school trip to Pompeii, led by a passionate teacher determined to instill in them a cultural and historical appreciation. In awarding it the festival’s top prize, the jury — cultural manager Kathleen Gomes, film programmer Maria João Madeira and actor Miguel Nunes — described “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.”

Record-breaking edition

The 30th edition was the most popular in the festival’s history, drawing more than 11,500 admissions across 67 screenings over nine days — a 53% increase over 2025. The program, built around themes of family, romantic and sexual relationships and a hopeful future, produced nine sold-out screenings, including “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.”

“This edition of the festival was particularly rewarding for us,” 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.

Documentary and art prizes

Lorena Ros’ Spanish documentary “Up and Running” (“Corren las Liebres”) matched “La Gradiva”’s double win, taking both the best documentary prize and the Audience Award. The film examines the growing marginalization and homelessness among the trans ex-prisoner population in Barcelona. The documentary jury — 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.”

The same jury gave a special mention to Nông Nhật Quang’s Vietnamese documentary “Baby Jackfruit Baby Guava,” which premiered at Visions du Réel and journeys into the past through the director’s diaries and family photographs.

In the Queer Art Competition, dedicated to works exploring the boundaries of cinematic languages and genres, the top prize went to the 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 landscape and family ties. The jury — Brazilian director Leonardo Mouramateus, curator Marta Mestre and German filmmaker Matthias Müller — also gave a special mention to “Life Is About Losing Everything” by brothers Benjamin Ramírez Pérez and Stefan Ramírez Pérez, calling it “a fascinating and colorful hybrid that serves as an adaptation of the highly distinctive universe of Canadian poet and feminist writer Lynn Crosbie.” The film world-premiered at the festival.

Shorts

In the Short Film Competition, “Je veux qu’on se souvienne de nous” by French writer Hélène Giannecchini won best short, while “Fronteriza,” a Brazilian-Paraguayan production by Nay Mendl and Rosa Caldeira, took the AltContent Award. The In My Shorts Competition, dedicated to short films from European film schools, awarded its top prize to “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.

With record attendance, an anniversary-scale retrospective and a string of Portuguese premieres from major European festivals, Queer Lisboa enters its fourth decade with its audience growing faster than at any point in its 28-year history.