Festival internacional Signos da Noite - Lisboa |
International Festival Signs of the Night - Lisbon |
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9° Festival internacional Signos da Noite - Lisboa / Outubro 6-12, 2025
23th International Festival Signs of the Night - Portugal
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Klaas Diersmann |
United Kingdom / 2023 / 0:06:30 |
In another country, separated from her family, one phone call is all Galyna has to ensure their safety.
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JURY DECLARATION:
"A Day in February" mastered the art of synthesis, deserving, therefore, the 9° Signes de Nuit International Film Festival Main Award. Set against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, this concise and powerful portrait draws us into the fear and sorrow of a divided family; conveyed through the sound of a sewing machine and a phone call. Supported by remarkable performances, the horrors of war remain unseen yet deeply felt, as personal relationships emerge as powerful political statements.
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SIGNS AWARD
The Signs Award honours films, which treat an important subject in an original and convincing way
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Domingo familiar |
Gerardo Del Razo |
Mexico / 2024 / 0:17:59 |
In a peripheral zone of Mexico City, the collection of money from merchants and residents of the area is an everyday occurrence. On a sunny Sunday, in a housing unit located in one of these areas, a merchant has not paid his fee and the hired killers have come to give him an ultimatum.
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JURY DECLARATION:
The jury recognize and have the pleasure in honoring the film Family Sunday, for its masterful handling of pacing and the highly appropriate direction of the performances. An amazing portrait of cooperation and resilience.
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NIGHT AWARD
The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving
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La Noche Dentro |
Antonio Cuesta |
Spain / 2023 / 0:24:00 |
Belén, a young nurse, wakes up after being attacked. She is accused of ending the life of a child after giving him medicine. But she claims she injected the right medication and that she can prove it.
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JURY DECLARATION:
For the sensitive direction, powerful performances, and for shedding a light on an overworked healthcare system. Through its visual language and emotional storytelling, it exposes both the fragility and the importance of those who work in this sector making the invisible impossible to ignore.
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Damian Walshe-Howling |
Australia / 2023 / O:20:54 |
1979. As volatile protests break out across the city of Sydney, Croatian born Marina is forced to expose a secretive love affair with her Australian boyfriend, as an escalating political storm spills into her childhood home with devastating consequences.
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JURY DECLARATION:
In "Unspoken", we are drawn into a world of intimate dilemmas and collective struggles. The characters move through a political crisis permeated by the invasion of their mother tongue; a language that feels foreign, even when spoken within their own nation. When it comes to protecting those you love or fighting for the future of your country, how far would you go? The director invites us to sit in that tension, offering more questions than answers, holding the audience in breathless, expectant searching.In great art, as in life, we may face choices without clear resolutions. It's in that uncertainty that Unspoken finds its deepest truth.
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EDWARD SNOWDEN AWARD
The Edward Snowden AWARD honors films, which offer sensitive (mostly) unknown information, facts and phenomenons of eminent importance, for which the festival wishes a wide proliferation in the future
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Exit Through the Cuckoo's Nest
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Nikola Ilic |
Switzerland / 2024 / 0:19:10 |
This personal short documentary tells the story of a soldier who never wanted to be one. His decision never to pull a trigger led to resistance and ultimately to military prison. Pretending to be mentally ill, he leaves the war zone and returns to Belgrade via the insane asylum. On the day NATO begins bombing the entire country.
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JURY DECLARATION:
For its deeply personal and vulnerable portrayal of a soldier who fought not to be one. Set in the Yugoslav Wars , the film’s use of archival, personal, and experimental imagery immersed us fully in its story. By blurring the boundaries between documentation and reflection, it reclaims history through the personal, reminding us of the trauma of being in war.
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DIRECTOR STATEMENT::
I’m afraid that in times like these, with ongoing wars and conflicts affecting so many around the globe, I believe it's more important than ever to share stories that stand for peace, humanity, and hope. I’m proud that my film contributes to that message.
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Kalani Gacon |
Australia, Nepal / 2024 / 017:23 |
During a storm in a remote Nepalese village, a mysterious man finds refuge in the house of a family haunted by their father's disappearance years before. Strangely unwilling to leave, he slowly reawakens lost memories of the missing father.
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JURY DECLARATION:
In the mountains of Nepal, between myth and dream, Family Man unveils a community on the verge of disappearance - women who still move to the rhythm of nature. With images of almost oneiric beauty, the film turns absence into landscape, an attempt to preserve communal life that will soon vanish under the velocity of our contemporary world.
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Pier-Philippe Chevigny |
Canada, Quebec / 2024 / 0:14:58 |
Hired at a slaughterhouse thanks to a social reinsertion program, an ex-convict struggles to find another job while repressing the violence that boils within him.
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JURY DECLARATION:
"Mercenaire" is an intense and deeply human portrait of reintegration, inner violence, and the fragility of a man trying to rebuild his life in a world that has already condemned him. Pier-Philippe Chevigny captures the body and gaze of a man in constant tension, using a tight, almost square frame that mirrors the protagonist’s mental and social confinement. The choice to film him mostly from behind, as if we were following him, never quite reaching him, heightens the sense of distance and isolation. The slaughterhouse setting, both physically and morally oppressive, becomes a brutal metaphor for the cycle of exclusion and violence the protagonist struggles to escape. Its ambiguous ending offers no easy answers.
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MENTION for the SIGNS AWARD
The Signs Award honours films, which treat an important subject in an original and convincing way
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Sinan Taner |
Switzerland / 2024 / 0:18:14 |
An elementary school sports day gets out of hand. A harmless argument between two children ends in death threats between the two fathers. The collective overload shakes an entire society and unfolds into a microcosm of chaos.
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JURY DECLARATION:
"1:10" stands out as a sharp observation of human nature and the invisible tensions that shape everyday life. Through a precise mise-en-scène and an almost divine perspective, the film turns a simple school sports day into a microcosm of social fragility and latent violence. The director’s decision to alternate this elevated viewpoint with moments where the protagonists “assume the gaze” themselves becomes a reflection on judgment, guilt, and our inability to communicate. The opening scene, unfolds as a hypnotic metaphor for competition and exclusion.
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MENTION for the NIGHT AWARD
The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving
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Don Josephus, Raphael Eblahan |
Philippines, USA, Singapore / 2024 /0:22:00 |
In the aftermath of an earthquake, the police find a man in the woods. A zoologist, a sound recorder, and a news team grapple with the truth that he may be the cause of all the natural disasters that devastated this small mountain town.
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JURY DECLARATION:
A man speaks the language of earthquakes.
In the mythical forests of the Philippines, his voice translates plants, animals, and minerals. A biologist listens — the encounter between realms makes the boundary between civilization and nature, between the human and the non-humans, tremble.Vox Humana reveals, through hypnotic images, the moment when the earth remembers its own voice.
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