Vila do Conde's Curtas short film festival hits its final stretch — cinema through Sunday
Vila do Conde's international short film festival reaches the last days of its 34th edition: 86 screenings, talks with directors and live cine-concerts, running through 26 July.
If you have a free weekend and a taste for cinema off the beaten track, point the car towards Vila do Conde. Curtas — the town’s international short film festival — is in the closing stretch of its 34th edition and runs through Sunday, 26 July, with most of the programme packed into these final days.
This is no stadium festival of pop headliners: it is one of Europe’s oldest and most respected short-film showcases, with a selection that jumps between decades, formats and very different ways of filming. In total there are 86 screenings, 16 conversations with directors, four workshops and a dozen activities for families and children.
What’s on at Curtas until Sunday?
The highlight of this edition is the Stereo strand, where cinema meets music in live cine-concerts. British musician Alabaster DePlume brings a new quintet project with an original score written for “Time of the Heathen” (1961); and Portuguese band Mão Morta join director Pedro Serrazina to revisit several of his shorts with new compositions played live. There are also the Cinema Revisited and New Voices strands, where the names to watch tend to surface.
How much is it, and where?
Screenings take place across the town’s usual venues, and prices vary by session — it is worth checking times and tickets ahead, because Curtas screenings fill up. If experimental cinema is your thing, this is the week to catch it in Portugal, away from the logic of the big summer festivals like the FMM Sines, also lighting up the Alentejo right now.
The full programme and box office are on the official Curtas website. Bring time and curiosity — that is half the battle.
Image: Carlos Cunha / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
