Festival internacional Signos da Noite - Lisboa
International Festival Signs of the Night - Lisbon





9° Festival internacional Signos da Noite - Lisboa / Outubro 6-12, 2025

23th International Festival Signs of the Night - Portugal

9



João Pedro Afonso
Portugal

Born at 1964, January 31, João Pedro Afonso is a sixty year's old street philosopher by choice, and a physicist by heart.

He has a degree in Engenharia Física Tecnológica (Physics engineering) and dabbled many years in the academy. He is the author of an algorithm for SAT solvers to find short-circuits in very large logic circuits presented at DATE 2017, which some thought to be a serious contender for a Ig Nobel award, and a current moderator in a Facebook group of quantum physics with 300 thousand members. He likes science, mathematics, puzzles, chess and other games, books, animation, science fiction and fantasy, children, to debate, to program, to swim, to draw, and much much more. He dislikes conflicts, mosquitoes and yellow soup. His most recent project is to grow a beard and see how the facial hair self-organizes. He wants to learn how to read Inca Quipus to see if there is an hidden meaning in the knots formed but so far, he only got a new understanding for the difficulties of long hair users like women.

I define culture not only as the flavor of our way of life but also as our main tool to prepares us to life. Open societies demand openess to ideas, discussions, contexts, and freedom to discuss alternatives. Cinema is one of the major arts to do that.




 

Alberto Baroni
Italy

 

Alberto Baroni (Brescia, 1986) started working as an independent filmmaker after graduating from the University of Milan with a thesis on Fritz Lang’s “Fury”. He produces documentaries, web-docs, corporate and advertising films, taking on the roles of director, operator, editor and colorist.

He collaborates with the C.T.U. (University Television Centre) of the University of Milan, contributing to the production of documentaries and commercials for the university.

In 2017, Alberto Baroni presented the invented language short film “Carro” at the Filmmaker Festival, which won the Best Photography award at the Valdarno Cinema Film Festival in 2018. In the same year, the short film “Efeso” was presented in several national and international festivals, and after that in 2019 it wins the Best Film Award at the Brianza Film Corto Festival. “LE – TOI – ILE” takes part in the 2019 Filmmaker Festival and wins the Best Sound Design award at the Hermetic International Film Festival. “La Force”, after its premiere at Filmmaker 2022, was presented at ShortCircuit in Brighton and at the International Festival Zeichen Der Nacht in Berlin. In 2024 “La Force” won the Best Experimental Short award at Desenzano Film Festival. Since 2018 he has been writing for the online film magazine “Gli Spietati”.




Josef Khallouf
Lebanon

Based in Beirut, Lebanon, Josef Khallouf began his directing career in 2005, writing, producing, and directing both fiction and documentary films. His work has been showcased at international festivals and explores themes of identity, history, and collective memory.

In addition to his filmmaking, he has taught Directing to university students, nurturing a new generation of storytellers.

In 2023, he brought together 18 Lebanese filmmakers for a unique collective film project “Letters” presented internationally. He is currently developing several feature-length projects spanning both documentary and narrative cinema.