FEST – New Directors/ New Films Festival was established in 2004 but today is considered one of the most important film events in Portugal. The festival’s rich program attracts audiences hungry for excellent international productions as well as filmmakers with industry events aimed at them.
This year, the festival has featured two Polish documentaries – Under The Sky by Marta Skiba and the awarded Last Knights of The Right Side by Michał Edelman.
The best feature-length documentary of the festival is about the Łódź chapter of the ONR (the National Radical Camp). Although they look almost identical in their black balaclavas, very different paths have led them to far-right views. Michal Edelman spent six months documenting the its activities – from propaganda parties with an obligatory barbecue, to attempts to disrupt the Equality March in Radomsk, to the culminating march through the streets of Warsaw on Independence Day in 2019. Are Łódź’s nationalists really just a group of colleagues with a common, distinctive worldview?
A list of all winners can be found here.