There is magic in every beginning. The first LusOFest took place in Offenbach am Main from 23 to 26 January 2025. Organised by a small team, with virtually no budget, funding or sponsors – but with a lot of passion and dedication. And also with a lot of positive energy and moral and practical support from the many people we shared our idea with on the way to making our project a reality. The first edition was entitled ‘Once upon a revolution’ and focused on the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and the independence of Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa.
The screenings took place at the Filmklubb Offenbach and Studio 57Nord. We showed both short and feature films. There was a short film competition which was open not only to Portuguese-language productions but also to those from the Rhine-Main region. In this article, we take a brief look back at the first edition of LusOFest in 2025.
Thursday, 23 January 2025
Opening Screening ‘Independência’
The opening day at Filmklubb was dedicated to colonialism and the struggle for independence. After a short opening speech by Nic Werth from Filmklubb and Marc Rodrigues from the LusOFest team, we showed the Angolan documentary ‘Independence‘ by Mário Fradique Bastos about the rocky road to independence in the well-attended Filmklubb.
At the opening, we also showed the thematically appropriate short film ‘Memórias de Pau-Preto e Marfim’ (Memories of Blackwood and Ivory) by the young Portuguese filmmaker Inês Costa as a supporting film. The animated film is based on sound bites from interviews with the filmmaker’s grandparents, who were themselves witnesses to Portuguese colonialism and African struggles for independence.
Fryday, 24 January 2025
Lights, Camera, Activism. Short Films Galore
Friday was dedicated to short films. First, we showed the second part of the ‘25 April in Short Films‘ reel – a programme about the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal and the Carnation Revolution. We were delighted to have Manuel Campos as our patron for the evening, who not only spoke about the period as a contemporary witness, but also performed some political fados and contextualised the music pieces.
Afterwards, we showed the first short film competition programme at 57Nord. Themed ‘Lights, Camera, Activism‘, the programme featured documentaries – all under 20 minutes long – and we were delighted with the great response to our premiere at 57Nord, which had been converted into a small cinema.
Offenbach filmmaker Bernd Thiele was present to introduce his film ‘Moebius’. Among the documentaries, ‘Brazil is my Abyss’ and ‘Mama – Africans in São Paulo’ were particularly well received by the audience and received special mentions.
Saturday, 25 January 2025
Full House, long Night
On the third day of the festival, we presented the documentary ‘Cesária Évora‘. We were able to screen the film a few months before its official German release and, as expected, it was one of the highlights of the festival. We showed the film to a sold-out audience at the Filmklubb Offenbach.
57Nord hosted a late night short film programme, by far our longest short film programme to date, with contributions from Germany, Angola, Brazil and Portugal – and a small horror/suspense block at the end.
Tieu-Anh Ly from Frankfurt was present for a discussion with female filmmakers. She showed her art film ‘To Make Sure The Two Of Us Meet’, which was part of the long short film programme on Saturday night.
Sunday, 26 January 2025
Grand Finale. Feijoada and Jury Price
The first two days at 57Nord were very well attended, but the Sunday matinee was even more crowded. On the last day of LusOFest, we prepared a vegan feijoada, a traditional Brazilian dish, at 57Nord with the help of some volunteers, and showed the documentary and contemporary document ‘Viva Portugal‘ from 1975. Before the documentary and the meal, we repeated the short documentary ‘Mona Wazediwa’ by filmmaker Henrique Sungo, which was part of Friday’s programme, in his presence.
In the afternoon, the grand finale of our short film competition took place with the Jury Prize. Our jury, made up of Gregor Maria Schubert, festival director of the Lichter Filmfest International in Frankfurt, and Michael Kegler, a translator of Portuguese-language literature, chose Leonardo Martinelli’s ‘Passáro Memória’ (A Bird Called Memory) as the winner of the 2025 LusOFest Jury Prize.
The winner of the Audience Award also came from this programme. After evaluating all the votes from the three competition programmes, the short film ‘Nichts’ by Sophia Münster received the best overall rating and won the 2025 LusOFest Audience Award.
An overview of the award-winning films and honourable mentions will follow shortly. The photos in this post are by Finn Moody Fiedler and Percy Walther. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date and follow us on social media. You can also find us on Letterboxd.
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