DocLisboa summons the lives of Salman Rushdie, Elza Soares or Kate Bush

O docLisboa festival, dedicated mainly to the documentary, is the 24th edition between October 15 and 25, with the organization revealing today some of the choices, such as “Knife: The attampted world of Salman Rushdie”, by Alex Gibney.

Salman Rushdie, who was last June at the Babell festival in Porto, was stabbed in 2022 during a literary conference in the United States, having lost his right eye and suffered permanent nerve damage from one hand.

In 2024 he released the memoir “Knife – Meditations following an attempted murder”, in which he recalls the events of that attack and the long recovery process.

DocLisboa will display a film about that attack, accompanying the recovery of the author of “The Satanic Verses”, crossing with autobiographical memories.

Among the novelties of the sections “Heart Beat” and “From Earth to Moon”, which put cinema in dialogue with other artistic expressions, DocLisboa proposes films about Brazilian singer Elza Soares and British singer Kate Bush, “two outstanding women of different times, spaces and styles”.

“Elza”, by Eryk Rocha, will arrive at DocLisboa days after the world premiere at the film festival in Rio de Janeiro, and in it Elza Soares “is a narrator of herself, weaving a diary that unites memories, desires and reflections from music, in confluence with historical Brazilian films”, as the synopsis says.

“Kate Bush – The Timeless Genius”, Sonia Gonzalez’s 2025 film, revisits the artist’s early years and career, “exploring the influence that her music and her independent spirit exerted and continue to exert in pop culture.”.

The festival will also host the first film by actress Juliette Binoche as director, with “In-I in Motion”, about her collaboration with dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, and also “Orson Welles: The One-Man Band”, film by Oja Kodar and Vassili Silovic, with images of unfinished projects of this director.

“Douglas Gordon by Douglas Gordon”, by Finlay Pretsell, about that visual artist already distinguished with the Turner Award, “Cantona”, by David Tryhorn and Ben Nicholas, about “the transformation of a player considered untamed into an icon of Manchester United”, and “Siri Hustvedt – Dance Around the Self”, by Sabine Lidl, about the life story of that writer, are other films selected.

The DocLisboa International Film Festival is organized by Apordoc – Association by the Documentary.