So-called omnibus films — or anthology films — constitute one of the historically most significant forms of exhibiting short films in a theatrical context. For decades, they represented one of the rare possibilities for the commercial circulation of the short format, bringing together different works into a single cinematic object. Despite a genealogy that dates back to the 1930s and includes more than a hundred productions worldwide, this model has largely remained on the margins of film history, as a kind of parallel tradition.

At a time when the short film is finding new modes of circulation — between international festivals and digital platforms — the episodic film continues, paradoxically, to be absent from regular programming circuits. It is in this context that Curtas Vila do Conde – International Film Festival, through its Revisited Cinema section, presents a programme dedicated to this hybrid format, situated between feature-length and short films.

Rather than attempting an exhaustive history of the genre, this programme focuses on thematic lines and narrative devices that have shaped different moments of its evolution. Through works produced between the 1940s and the 1980s, the programme highlights how the “episodic film” served as a platform for formal experimentation, collaborations between filmmakers, and plural approaches to central themes of modernity.

Issues such as passion, war, sexuality, feminism, or horror run through this selection of films, revealing the format’s potential as a space for creative freedom and social commentary. At the same time, the programme interrogates the industrial, cultural, and aesthetic conditions that, at certain moments, enabled its emergence as a viable — and sometimes commercially successful — proposition.

The selection brings together six emblematic titles: Dead of Night (1945), Boccaccio ’70 (1962), Far from Vietnam (1967), Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986), and New York Stories (1989). Across these works, we find contributions from key filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Chantal Akerman, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini, and Vittorio De Sica.

By bringing these works together, Curtas Vila do Conde proposes not only a historical revisitation, but also a critical reassessment of a format that continues to challenge categories and open up possibilities for thinking about cinema as a collective, fragmented, and constantly reinvented practice.