Walerian Borowczyk is said to have strongly disagreed when critics designated him as a surrealist, and that he was outraged when his work was characterised as erotic. Despite his prolific work, which spans documentary, animation, advertising, short and feature films, Borowczyk remains a mystery to most cinema-goers. A man of "dazzling imagination", as André Breton described him, he was born in Poland, but it was in France that he established himself as a creator.

Throughout the 1960s he created over 60 animations, exploring the aesthetic and technical limits of language. He painted trains at night to board them during the day to create moving images; he invited friends to live film events, screening the films that he had painted by hand. He became a professional director in 1957, alongside Jan Lenica, with Once Upon a Time, and took the step into feature filmmaking with Lord and Lady Kabal's Theatre, in 1967. It was, however, with Immoral Tales (1973, co-directed with Fabrice Luchini and Paloma Picasso), and with The Beast (1975), that Borowczyk's name caught the attention of larger audiences. Taking advantage of the power of allegory (so well exploited in his animated works), the "engineer of ecstasy" – as he was to be dubbed – experiments a new language: one that balances eroticism and kitsch and enthuses the audience with the atmosphere each film creates. Themes such as intimacy, sexual fantasies, the need to take risks and the denial of modesty become central to his work, challenging some of the most conservative ideas that still marked the societies of the time.

The 31st Curtas presents an extensive programme of his work in short films, crossing fiction, documentary and animation, and showing films such as Jouet Joyeux (Walerian Borowczyk; 3', France, 1979) or Street Art (Walerian Borowczyk, Jan Lenica; 1', Poland, 1957).

On the other side of this coin is Radu Jude, a name that should not be unknown to those attentive to contemporary cinematography. Nominee Curtas Vila do Conde to the European Film Awards, with The Potemkinists, and owner of a filmography that balances humour and forcefulness, Jude's films seek to experiment new forms of expression that frame, under the magnifying glass of his century, timeless themes such as freedom, equality and fraternity. Having as a backdrop the reality of his country, Romania, Radu Jude's work finds, with unquestionable ease, a way to break taboos, taking us through the absurdity of social malaise and the way states have been creating narratives that distract us from their mistakes and misdemeanours.

O 31.º Curtas dedicates a special programme to Radu Jude focused on his short film work, screening films like In the Morning (28', 2007), The Tube With a Hat (23', Romania, 2007), Alexandra (24', Romania, 2008), Shadow of a Cloud (30', Romania, 2013), It Can Pass Through the Wall (17', Romania, 2014), The Marshal's Two Executions (10', Romania, 2014), Punish and Discipline (12', Romania, 2019), Plastic Semiotic (22', Romania, 2021), Caricaturana (9', Romania, 2021), The Potemkinists (18', Romania, 2022) or Memories From the Eastern Front (with Adrian Cioflâncă, 30', Romania, 2022).