Susana Santos Rodrigues, one of the three directors of the festival, reminded Lusa, in mid-April, of the "pre-availability of programmers to look for new voices, new ways of doing things, new ways of telling a story, both aesthetically and formally."

"I think there's a theme that we feel stands out in the festivals we've been going to, which is gender issues. It is a theme that perhaps in other years has been present in a more subtle way, but that this year is present in a marked way, "said Susana Santos Rodrigues.

We highlight the opening of the film, "Something you said last night", the first work of the Italian-Canadian director Luis De Filippis and whose story goes beyond gender identity issues, or the premiere of "Orlando, ma biographie politique", by Paul B. Preciado, from the homonymous work of Virginia Woolf and with the participation of trans and non-binary people.

This year an award was created in partnership with the association Mutim - Mulheres Trabalhadores das Imagens em Movimento (Women Workers of Moving Images) and a laboratory was created to develop projects "that counter the stereotype of characters and more conventional and stereotyped stories within the cinema".

Of this year's programme, the national competition will feature more than twenty films, such as "Rosinha e outros bichos do mato", by Marta Pessoa, "Índia", Telmo Churro's first feature, the diptych "Mal Viver" and "Viver Mal", by João Canijo, and the short films "Dildotectónica", by Tomás Paula Marques, "Pátio do Carrasco", by André Gil Mata, and "The Fever of Mary John", by the brothers Afonso and Bernardo Rapazote.

The announced program also contains a focus dedicated to "Labor and trade union movement", anticipating the 50th anniversary of April 25, with a choice that includes films by António Campos, Manoel de Oliveira, Harun Farocki or Ben Russell.

According to Carlos Ramos, the 2024 edition of IndieLisboa will be dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the end of the dictatorship, but everything is still open.

Also on the 20th edition, Susana Santos Rodrigues and Carlos Ramos stressed the objective of strengthening the contact between film and audio-visual professionals.

"This year there is an increase in activities, there will be a co-production forum, there is an increase in industry activities, because there was this support for the networks of the European Union," they explained, giving as an example the recent Smart7, a network of seven European festivals, created to foster "the transnational circulation" of European films.

This year IndieLisboa will once again occupy the São Jorge cinema, Culturgest, the Portuguese Cinematheque and the Ideal Cinema, adding to it the Cinema Fernando Lopes – a cinema that exists in the Lusófona University – and the Penha de França swimming pool, where there will be three sessions in which spectators can be in the water to watch cinema.