What's on at MOTELx for its 20th birthday? More than 170 films, 40 countries, 11 days
Lisbon's horror festival runs from 3 to 13 September across Cinema São Jorge and the Cinemateca, with nearly 150 screenings and a centenary tribute to Roger Corman.
Portugal’s horror festival turns twenty this year, and it is marking the occasion by getting bigger than it has ever been. MOTELx runs from 3 to 13 September, eleven days carrying more than 170 films from 40 countries across close to 150 screenings.
Cinema São Jorge on Avenida da Liberdade remains the festival’s home. The Cinemateca Portuguesa takes a substantial share of the programme, and the rest spills out into Palácio do Grilo, Jardim das Amoreiras, Casa do Comum and a lounge pitched directly outside São Jorge, which is where the evening carries on after the last screening.
The four film-makers being honoured
Roger Corman leads the tributes. The American producer and director spent a career proving that a small budget excuses nothing, and 2026 would have been his hundredth year; his widow and fellow producer Julie Corman is travelling to Lisbon for it.
Alongside him sit Sergio Martino, the Italian giallo veteran, and Solveig Nordlund, the Portuguese-Swedish director receiving the Noémia Delgado Prize for Notable Women in Horror. The fourth tribute is the one most worth clearing an afternoon for: in the Quarto Perdido strand, the festival brings back José de Sá Caetano with As Ruínas no Interior (1977), Um S Marginal (1983) and Azul Azul (1986).
Opening and closing night
Drag, starring Lizzy Caplan, opens the festival. Fall 2: Deadpoint closes it. In between there are Portuguese short-film competitions, double bills, retrospective strands and the long-running Lobo Mau section, built to introduce younger audiences to genre cinema without wrecking their sleep.
Book early if any of this appeals. Opening and closing nights and the double bills tend to go first, and an anniversary edition draws a bigger crowd than usual. Screening times and tickets are on the MOTELx site.
If you are already heading to that end of the Avenida, the Cinemateca runs its own parallel programme, including the restoration work that reached Venice this year.
Photo: Kegrazie / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
