The 31st Curtas in numbers: 45 films in the International and National competitions, totalling 268 films from 40 countries, screened in 86 sessions, including 3 concerts, 4 exhibitions, 12 talks, 8 industry events and 10 happy hours and parties, with a total of 20,000 spectators.

Sections marked by geographical and style diversity (fiction, documentary and animation), the International and National Competitions of the 31st edition of Curtas de Vila do Conde presented a selection of 45 films. On the veterans' side, we highlight the national premieres of the most recent works by Lucrecia Martel (Maid), Carla Simón (Letter to my Mother for My Son), Antonin Peretjatko (Evil Seaweed), Jean-Gabriel Périot (All Effort of Men) and the duo Benjamin de Burca and Bárbara Wagner (Voice of the Land). Among the new authors, there was an opportunity to discover the works of the French Sarah-Anaïs Desbenoit, the Egyptian Morad Mostafa, the French Julia Kowalski, the Chinese Zhang Dalei, the Franco-German Lucas Malbrun, the Italian Francesco Sossai and the Spanish Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe.

At the national level, a transversal look at the cinema that is produced today, from north to south of the country. Throughout the week, works by António Pinhão Botelho, Basil da Cunha, David Ferreira, Dimitri Mihajlovic & Miguel Lima, Diogo Baldaia, Duarte Coimbra, Francisco Carvalho, Inês Teixeira, Mário Macedo & Vanja Vascarac, Marta Monteiro, Mónica Lima, Nuno Amorim, Pedro Bastos, Pedro Neves, Susana Abreu and Tomás Baltazar passed through Vila do Conde. The programme of films produced in Portugal also included a special session with the three short films that were part of the programme Fábrica de Realizadores - Norte de Portugal, screened at Cannes (Thorn, by André Guiomar and Mya Kaplan; Maria, by Mário Macedo and Dornaz Hajiha; Seagulls Cut Through the Sky, by Mariana Bártolo and Guillermo Garcia Lopez), as well as the screenings, in the National Panorama session, of Pátio do Carrasco – The Damned Yard, by André Gil Mata, On That Day in Lisbon, by Daniel Blaufuks, and The Long Legged Man, by Vítor Hugo Rocha.

Opening the festival, in national preview, was 20,000 Species of Bees, the first feature film by Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, winner of the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at this year's Berlinale, a delicate and emotional narrative about family and identity, with a brilliant performance by Patricia López Arnaiz. Meanwhile, Pictures of Ghosts, Kleber Mendonça Filho's latest creation, closed the festival. It is a story of falling in love with a city, in its changes and details, its cinemas and its people. A declaration of love for Recife that only cinema can show.

As part of the Cinema Revisited section, FILMar and Curtas came together to review the work of Augusto Cabrita (1923-1993), on the centenary of his birth. The programme included a series of film sessions, talks and an exhibition (8 to 31 July at the Municipal Theatre of Vila do Conde), which highlight the dimensions of the attentive observer of the dialogue between the landscape, social and maritime, its transformation by human action and what can be kept of a vanishing memory.

The New Voices section this year included a look at the works of Portuguese João Gonzalez – with a carte blanche that included his films, some choices and the exhibition Ice Merchants: from the Sub-Conscious to the Screen – Spanish Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren and the pseudo-Marxist guerrilla media collective, Total Refusal.

The festival also included programmes focusing on the works of Billy Roisz, Deborah Stratman and Radu Jude, as well as the two concert films in the Stereo section: Bohren & der Club of Gore x Le Révélateur by Philippe Garrel and Miaux x Carnival of Souls by Herk Harvey, and the return to the stage of TURBO JUNK I.E with an exhibition dedicated to their history.

The various competitions of the 31st Curtas Vila do Conde registered this year almost 6500 entries, coming from 142 different countries.

More than 20,000 spectators attended the 31st Curtas Vila do Conde, including film sessions, exhibitions, workshops, talks, masterclasses, activities for industry professionals, online broadcasts, parties and happy hours.